LOW TEMPERATURE TENSILE TESTING OF INDEPENDENTLY FABRICATED GOLD THIN FILM SAMPLES

Tensile testing of free standing thin films is of great importance for determining their material properties. Samples have always been co fabricated with the MEMS device being used as the test apparatus. Consequently, a new device has to be used each time a new sample is tested, resulting in loss of precision. The proposed idea is to independently fabricate free standing gold thin film samples and transfer them to a separately fabricated cascaded thermal actuator setup. Thermal actuators are desirable due to the large deflections and forces they provide while maintaining a relatively low thermal gradient across the test specimen. 250 nm thick Gold samples are fabricated with varying lengths of 50,100, 500, 625 & 750 μm with corresponding thermal actuators. Also, to study the drastic effects of change in temperature on the tensile behavior of these samples, a lab scale cryostat capable of experimentation in the 4 K -300 K temperature range is also developed and presented in detail in the first half of this thesis