Mechanical Characterization of Thin Polymer Films
Aims
developping
characterization methods
providing
electromechanical design parameters
evaluating
MEMS devices solely based on polymers
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In recent years one could observe the advent of polytronic systems e.g.
systems whose electronics are based on organic materials.
Typical examples are OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes) and
RFID tags. One major advantage that
these devices have in common is their potential mechanical
flexibility. This can be advantegeous for production e.g.
in roll-to-roll fabrication (Link chemnitz) but also for bendable devices (for
an overview of devices please check the corresponding
Wikipedia
page). As such devices on flexible
substrates will be bent during production or operation
the knowledge of the elastic properties of these
functional materials is mandatory.
Typical dimensions of functional organic layers in
actual devices are in the range of several hundreds of nanometers.
Therefore also for mechanical testing typical dimensions of the test specimens
should be in the same range. Therefore, this project was
divided up into four subsequent steps:
tensile
tests on a setup previously developped at our center and morphological
characterization
newly
developped microtensile tests for evaluating mechanical properties at a
submicron level
in
situ atomic force microscopy for microfracture experiments
determination
of piezoresistive properties and application of this effext in total polymer
MEMS devices
Reference
Udo Lang
Experimental Methods
for Evaluating the Mechanical Properties of Thin Layers of Intrinsically
Conductive Polymers
PhD thesis, ETH Zürich, 2008.
