Silicon Carbide (SiC) is an appealing material for harsh environment MEMS applications. It can be sputtered at low temperatures by an Ion-Beam Assisted Deposition (IBAD) system to produce amorphous thin-films and vacuum encapsulations. The goal of this project is to investigate the stress-temperature relation of these amorphous SiC films in order to calculate their biaxial moduli and coefficients of thermal expansion. The “double-substrate technique†is employed to compare the differences in these properties for films that are sputtered both with and without ion-beam assistance on quartz and silicon substrates. Characterizing these films will determine if certain issues, such as thermal and stress mismatches, will pose a problem in certain applications.
Project end date: 08/14/07