Overview

The main structural materials for micro-electromechanical devices, micromachines, etcetera have special features, such as the typical dimensions of a few microns, material fabrication by deposition, and test piece fabrication by means of non-mechanical machining, including photolithography. Thin film materials are the main structural materials for micro-electromechanical devices (MEMS), micromachines and similar machines. The hanging strip (or bridge) between two fixed supports is widely used in MEMS or micro-machines. It is much easier to fabricate this structure than the conventional tensile test pieces. This document specifies the strip bending test method to measure tensile properties of thin films with high accuracy, repeatability, moderate effort of alignment and handling compared to the conventional tensile test. This testing method is valid for test pieces with a thickness between 50 nm and several micrometers and with an aspect ratio (ratio of length to thickness) of more than 300. The test procedures are so simple that they can be readily automated. This document can be utilized as a quality control test for MEMS production since its testing throughput is very high compared to the conventional tensile test. The responsible committee is K 631 "Halbleiterbauelemente" ("Semiconductor devices") of the DKE (German Commission for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies) at DIN and VDE.

Document: references other documents

Responsible national committee

DKE/K 631 - Halbleiterbauelemente