Determination of young's modulus of PZT-influence of cantilever orientation

Calculation of the resonance frequency of cantilevers fabricated from an elastically anisotropic material requires the use of an effective Young’s modulus. In this paper a technique to determine the appropriate effective Young’s modulus for arbitrary cantilever geometries is introduced. This technique is validated using a combined analytical and finite element simulations (FEM) approach. In addition, the effective Young’s modulus of PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 (PZT) thin films deposited on dedicated micromachined cantilevers was investigated experimentally. The PZT films were deposited on the cantilevers by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). The change in flexural resonance frequency of the cantilevers was measured both before and after deposition of the PZT thin film. From this frequency difference we determined the Young’s modulus of PZT deposited by PLD to be 103 ± 2 GPa. Even though the PZT is grown epitaxially, this value is independent of the in-plane orientation

A Musical instrument in MEMS

In this work we describe a MEMS instrument that resonates at audible frequencies, and with which music can be made. The sounds are generated by mechanical resonators and capacitive displacement sensors. Damping by air scales unfavourably for generating audible frequencies with small devices. Therefore a vacuum of 1.5 mbar is used to increase the quality factor and consequently the duration of the sounds to around 0.25 s. The instrument will be demonstrated during the MME 2010 conference opening, in a musical composition especially made for the occasion

Determination of the Young's modulus of pulsed laser deposited epitaxial PZT thin films

We determined the Young’s modulus of pulsed laser deposited epitaxially grown PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 (PZT) thin films on microcantilevers by measuring the difference in cantilever resonance frequency before and after deposition. By carefully optimizing the accuracy of this technique, we were able to show that the Young’s modulus of PZT thin films deposited on silicon is dependent on the in-plane orientation, by using cantilevers oriented along the 1 1 0 and 1 0 0 silicon directions. Deposition of thin films on cantilevers affects their flexural rigidity and increases their mass, which results in a change in the resonance frequency. An analytical relation was developed to determine the effective Young’s modulus of the PZT thin films from the shift in the resonance frequency of the cantilevers, measured both before and after the deposition. In addition, the appropriate effective Young’s modulus valid for our cantilevers’ dimensions was used in the calculations that were determined by a combined analytical and finite-element (FE) simulations approach. We took extra care to eliminate the errors in the determination of the effective Young’s modulus of the PZT thin film, by accurately determining the dimensions of the cantilevers and by measuring many cantilevers of different lengths. Over-etching during the release of cantilevers from the handle wafer caused an undercut. Since this undercut cannot be avoided, the effective length was determined and used in the calculations. The Young’s modulus of PZT, deposited by pulsed laser deposition, was determined to be 103.0 GPa with a standard error of ± 1.4 GPa for the 1 1 0 crystal direction of silicon. For the 1 0 0 silicon direction, we measured 95.2 GPa with a standard error of ± 2.0 GPa

Influence of silicon orientation and cantilever undercut on the determination of the Young’s modulus of thin films

The Young’s modulus of thin films can be determined by deposition on a micronsized Si cantilever and measuring the resonance frequency before and after deposition. The accuracy of the method depends strongly on the initial determination of the mechanical properties and dimensions of the cantilever. We discuss the orientation of the cantilever with respect to the Si crystal, and the inevitable undercut of the cantilever caused by process inaccuracies. By finite element modelling we show that the Young’s modulus should be used instead of the analytical plate modulus approximation for the effective Young’s modulus of Si cantilevers used in this work for both the 1 0 0 and 1 1 0 crystal orientation. Cantilever undercut can be corrected by variation of the cantilever length. As an example, the Young’s modulus of PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 (PZT) thin films deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) was determined to be 99 GPa, with 1.4 GPa standard error

Influence of silicon orientation and cantilever undercut on the determination of Young's modulus of pulsed laser deposited PZT

In this work we show for the first time that the effective in-plane Young’s modulus of PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 (PZT) thin films, deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on dedicated single crystal silicon cantilevers, is independent of the in-plane orientation of cantilevers