Fabrication of new aluminium frame for in-situ tensile testing in TEM

The in-depth characterization of thin films is important for the improvement of the performance of next generation Micro-Electro-Mechanical systems (MEMS) device. A straight-forward approach is to measure the tensile properties thin film. This approach combined with in-situ observation in TEM will deepen the understanding of the behavior of materials at nanoscale. Although, a wide range of solutions have been proposed for determining the mechanical properties of nano-structures and thin film, there is limited report on the tensile properties of thin films below 50nm. An aluminium frame have been fabricated in this work by optical lithography technique to ensure the transfer of an ultrathin tensile structure (~ 30nm) onto a "Push-to-Pull" devices used for nanoscale tensile testing. This method have been applied for the in-situ tensile testing of copper thin film where a total strain of 0.107 [-] was observed.