Search

MEMS (Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems) is a rapidly growing field building upon the existing silicon processing infrastructure and techniques to create micro-scale devices or systems [1]. However, the progress of the MEMS depends on the state-of-the-art test and measurement methodologies to inspect the deformation of the microcomponents for further understanding of their mechanical properties, which will push the design to its extreme. Among the existing optical techniques, interferometry is still widely used due to its capability of performing accurate measurements on microcomponents with surface deformation ranging from less than 0.1 nm to several hundreds of microns. In this paper an optical Michelson interferometry technique is developed for testing deformation and corresponding mechanical parameters of a surface micromachined beam under applied voltage (both AC and DC source). A long distance microscope with the CCD camera or high-speed camera is utilized to capture the interference fringe pattern that results from recombination of two beams reflected from the optical mirror in the Mirau objective and the micro-beam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]