Abstract
For the evaluation of the mechanical properties of microelements, bending tests of cantilever beams have been widely used because they are easier than tensile tests to fix the specimens to testing machines. For bending tests, it is very important to apply the load to the specified test position, because the indented position affects the load-displacement curves of the cantilever beams. In this paper, bending tests of polysilicon microelements were conducted by using a nanoindentation system with a help of in situ SPM imaging. The in situ SPM images were obtained by the indenter probe before and after bending tests. The bending specimens tested were 3.8μm thick, 5μm wide, and 20 or 35μm long. The difference between the specified test position and the indented position was within 0.2μm, which affected Young's modulus by 3%. The Young's modulus of polysilicon microelements obtained in this study was 140±11GPa, with a help of FEM analysis.
