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Thin films are used in a wide variety of computing and communication applications although their fatigue behavior and its dependence on alloying elements are not very well known. In this paper, we present an experimental implementation of a novel high-throughput fatigue testing method for metallic thin films. The methodology uses the fact that the surface strain amplitude of a vibrating cantilever decreases linearly from the fixed end to the free end. Therefore, a thin film attached to a vibrating cantilever will experience a gradient of strain and corresponding stress amplitudes along the cantilever. Each cantilever can be used to extract a lifetime diagram by measuring the fatigue-induced damage front that progresses along the cantilever during up to 10 8 load cycles.

Thin film processing has been a driving technology in microelectronics and mechanics for years. The reliability of such devices is often limited by the failure of thin films. Therefore a deeper understanding of fatigue mechanisms of thin films through experiments is necessary to develop physical based lifetime models. Thus, this paper focuses on a novel setup for micro beam bending of thin metal films on Si cantilever substrate and first results will be presented.