Resonant microcantilevers for the determination of the loss modulus of thin polymer films

Cédric Ayela (1) , Stephen Heinrich (2) , Fabien Josse (3) , Isabelle Dufour (1)

1 IMS - Laboratoire de l'intégration, du matériau au système
2 Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering [Milwaukee]
3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

The increasing interest in polymer materials creates the need for accurate tools to characterize their mechanical properties. Due to energy dissipation in polymers during deformation, these materials exhibit viscoelastic behavior. Accurate determination of these viscoelastic properties and, more specifically, viscous losses, remains challenging and mainly unknown for thin polymer films. In the present work, a straightforward method to determine the loss modulus of organic materials using resonating microcantilevers has been developed. The extracted results for polyisobutylene (PIB) show the variation of viscous losses over a large range of frequencies (7-350kHz).

Mots clés: Microcantilever; Polymers Viscoelasticity

Domaines: Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Cédric Ayela, Stephen Heinrich, Fabien Josse, Isabelle Dufour. Resonant microcantilevers for the determination of the loss modulus of thin polymer films. Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 2011, 20 (4), pp.788-790. ⟨10.1109/JMEMS.2011.2159102⟩. ⟨hal-00590968⟩