The Influence of Substrate on the Mechanical and Tribological Characteristics of MEMS Materials for Space Applications

Abstract

Aluminum, gold, silver, nickel, silicon, glass, silicon dioxide, silicon nitride and so on, employed as bulk materials or thin films, represent the most commonly used materials for MEMS applications within the automotive, biomedicine, spatial industries and so forth. This work is a study regarding the influence of substrate nature on the mechanical properties of silver thin films elaborated for MEMS devices. The silver thin films were obtained by thermal evaporation method under vacuum protection on three different substrates. Glass, plastic (polycarbonate) and steel (C45) respectively are the materials used for the substrates. Further, atomic force microscopy investigations were performed on the elaborated samples in order to characterize them at a nanoscale and establish substrates influence. The Young’s modulus, nanohardness and roughness of the researched samples are the characteristics that were determined. A significant influence of substrate nature on the properties mentioned above for the studied silver thin films was marked out.