Other Materials Science and Engineering Commons^™

Design, Fabrication, And Characterization Of A Thin-Film Nickel-Titanium Shape Memory Alloy Diaphragm For Use In Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems, Brian Joel Alvarez

Master's Theses

Previous work done at Cal Poly has shown that thin-film nickel-titanium (NiTi) can be easily sputtered onto silicon wafers and annealed to create a crystallized shape memory alloy (SMA) film. Initial work on creating devices yielded cantilevers that were highly warped due to thin-film stress created during the sputtering process. The objective of this work was to create a thin-film NiTi SMA device that could be better characterized. A membrane was selected due to the simplicity of fabrication and testing which would also oppose the thin-film stress due to the increase in attachment points to the substrate.

Silicon wafers were …

Nanoindentation Of Annealed And As-Sputtered Thin Films Of Nickel Titanium Shape Memory Alloys, Matthew Tyson Lewis

Master's Theses

The bottom-up processing techniques used for making Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices can produce material properties different from bulk processing. The material properties must be evaluated with the process parameters used and for changes in the process parameters. The mechanical properties are needed to design MEMS devices. A material of interest for MEMS devices is nickel titanium (NiTi) shape memory alloy (SMA) because of the high work output (~107 J/m3). This thesis will focus on the fabrication of thin film NiTi by DC magnetron sputtering deposition and testing mechanical properties of the fabricated films by nanoindentation. Thin film NiTi SMA was …