Publication:

Measurement of residual stresses in micromachined structures in a microregion

The use of a focused ion beam equipment is reported to find out the in-plane residual stress value of a microelectromechanical system structure by performing a local stress release. The ion beam column is used to mill stress-release slots of a few microns, whereas the scanning electron column captures micrographs of the milled area before and after the stress release process. The displacement component perpendicular to the slot is obtained from digital image correlation analysis of the captured high-resolution micrographs. The fitting of the experimental results with an analytical model together with the independent determination of the Young's modulus allows one to find the residual stress value of the layer under study to a very good accuracy.