The mechanical behavior of freestanding thin sputter-deposited films of Au is studied at temperatures up to 340°C using tensile testing. Films tested at elevated temperatures exhibit a significant decrease in flow stress and stiffness. Furthermore the flow stress decreases with decreasing film thickness, contravening the usual notion that "smaller is stronger". This behavior is attributed mainly to diffusion-facilitated grain boundary sliding.Keywords: In situ tensile test, High-temperature deformation, Thin films, Grain boundary sliding, Creep
IntroductionThe decreasing size of microelectronics devices has motivated a strong interest in the effects of length scales on the mechanical behavior of thin films of metal. As a result, metal thin films, which are key components in these devices, have been studied extensively. These investigations have demonstrated that the mechanical properties of thin films are generally very different from those of their bulk counterparts [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and that they depend on whether the film is freestanding or supported by a substrate [12][13][14][15]. Understanding the mechanical behavior of metal thin films at elevated temperature is essential for the design of reliable devices, which often operate above room temperature. Several studies have been performed on the high-temperature behavior of films on substrates [2,[16][17][18][19], but studies on freestanding films have been limited to temperatures below 200ºC [20][21][22][23] due to difficulties associated with sample handling, oxidation, and temperature uniformity in the sample. The few studies performed at higher temperatures focused on films that were several microns thick [24][25][26]. Thus, the high-temperature behavior of freestanding metal thin films is still relatively unexplored. Recently, we developed a technique for the tensile testing of freestanding thin films in which samples were mounted on a micro-machined silicon frame with integrated heaters [27]. The samples were deformed in-situ inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM) by means of a custom-built test apparatus. Using this technique, the stress-strain curves of copper thin films were measured at temperatures up to 430°C. In this paper, the same technique is used to characterize the mechanical behavior of gold films as a function of temperature and strain rate. Gold was chosen as the material of interest due to its oxidation resistance and low electrical resistivity. The oxidation resistance makes gold an interesting material for studying the inherent mechanical behavior at elevated temperature without the added complication of a passivation