Surface stress variation as a function of applied compressive stress and temperature in microscale silicon

Abstract

Surface stress has been shown to affect the mechanical properties of materials at or below the microscale. Surface-stress-induced dislocation activity at such length scales has been shown to be a major factor affecting the mechanical behavior of materials. Defect generation as a function of applied stress at the microscale has previously been measured experimentally and predicted using simulations. However, the change in surface stress in a material in response to externally applied stress as a function of temperature has not been explored experimentally. Such an investigation is presented in this work for the case of microscale silicon samples. In-situ nondestructive measurements of the applied compressive stress and the corresponding microscale surface stress were performed from room temperature to 100 °C. The applied stress was controlled by a nanomechanical loading system. Micro-Raman spectroscopy was used to measure the surface stress in-situ as the samples deformed under the applied uniaxial compressive stress. The surface stress was found to be lower than the applied stress at all temperatures. The difference between the surface stress and the applied stress became higher at higher temperatures indicating that surface relaxation was induced by the temperature increase. Based on the measured values and observed trends, an exponential Gaussian function is proposed to describe the stress as a function of surface depth.