Elastic-properties measurement at high temperatures through contact resonance atomic force microscopy

Miniaturization of products and need for further improvement of machines performance introduce new serious challenges in materials characterization. In particular non-destructive mechanical testing in the submicrometer scale is needed to better understand and improve micro-manufacturing operations. To this regard, some open issues are of particular interest: low depth of penetration, high lateral resolution and measurements at elevated temperatures. An interesting solution is given by acoustic microscopy techniques, which can be successfully implemented for advanced research in surface elasticity, allowing fast direct and non-destructive measurement of Young's modulus and related surface parameters. In this work an instrument set up for Contact Resonance Atomic Force Microscopy is proposed, where the sample with is coupled to a heating stage and a piezoelectric transducer directly vibrate the cantilever during scanning, in order to allow exploitation of high resolution measurements at relatively high temperatures. Such instrument set up was undergone a set of calibration experiments in order to allow not only qualitative but also quantitative characterization of surfaces. The work was completed with a feasibility study with mechanical and topography measurements at temperatures as high as 150°C, with lateral resolution lower than 100 nm.