Stress relaxation study of sputtered Platinum thin films at near room temperature using an ultrasensitive strain gauge

An ultra-sensitive, encapsulated, resonating strain gauge first presented in Transducers'09 was calibrated and used to study stress relaxation of sputtered 99.95% Platinum (Pt) thin films at temperatures of less than 100°C. Because of the extreme long-term stability of these encapsulated crystalline resonators and the ability to observe frequency changes at or below 1 ppm, this device offers a unique opportunity to observe creep in technologically-important films in real time and with unprecedented sensitivity.