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Program Application

Nanomechanical Characterization System

Instrument types

Used to study the mechanical properties of nanoscale PZT cantilevers. The system consists of a small ion-pumped vacuum chamber with controlled leak back that is mounted onto the stage of a Nikon inverted microscope in the MRSEC CFL. This will allow chips with many cantilevers to be studied under ambient pressures ranging from atmospheric to 10-9 torr. Long working distance microscope objectives are used to focus a laser beam onto the oscillator through a viewport. Interference between light reflected from the moving oscillator and the underlying substrate is sensed by an ac-coupled photodetector whose output is fed to a spectrum analyzer for analysis.