A Novel Symmetric Test Structure for Residual Stress on MEMS Thin Film

Residual stress is one of the important parameters of thin films, which can seriously affect the properties, performance and long-term stability of thin films. Stress measurement techniques are therefore essential for both process development and process monitoring. This paper presents a novel symmetric micro strain gauge which can be in situ fabricated. The structure is modeled and simulated in ANSYS. Both compressive and tensile stress can be measured via this strain gauge and the resolution can reach to 0.0005% with optimized dimension.