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Bulge fatigue testing of freestanding and supported gold films

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Abstract

The bulge test was used to investigate the fatigue properties of gold thin films with a thickness between 100 and 300 nm. The membranes were pressurized at a rate of 0.2 Hz up to 105 times, during which their stress and strain states were continuously recorded. Gold films on a silicon nitride substrate were cyclically loaded into tension and compression. Due to the presence of the substrate, no membrane failure was observed, but the residual stress shifted from an initially tensile state to an increasingly compressive one. Typical fatigue damage mechanisms consisting of extrusions were found in some large grains. Freestanding films were cyclically loaded in pure tension until failure occurred. The data acquired during the fatigue tests show a strong ratcheting of the films, which is indicative of cyclic plastic creep. Microstructural investigations clearly show grain boundary sliding in very thin films with columnar grains extending through the thickness.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the kind support received from Petra Rosner from the group of Erdmann Spiecker in Erlangen for the deposition of the gold films. They also thank Heinz Werner Höppel for his valuable advice about the fatigue tests, as well as Haël Mughrabi for useful discussions about the manuscript. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the funding of the German Research Council (DFG), which, within the framework of its “Excellence Initiative,” supports the cluster of excellence “Engineering of Advanced Materials” at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.

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  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Institute I, Martensstr. 5, D-91058, Erlangen, Germany

    Benoit Merle & Mathias Göken

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  1. Benoit Merle
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  2. Mathias Göken
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Correspondence to Benoit Merle.

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Merle, B., Göken, M. Bulge fatigue testing of freestanding and supported gold films. Journal of Materials Research 29, 267–276 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2013.373

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