Deflection Measurement and Determination of Young’s Modulus of Micro-cantilever Using Phase-shift Shadow Moiré Method

The deflection of micro-structures have been previously measured using optical interferometry methods. In this study, the classical phase-shift shadow moiré method (PSSM) was applied to measure the deflection of a silicon micro-cantilever and to determine the Young’s modulus of the cantilever material. The modulus value was determined from the profile based on deflection equation. A normal white light source and a grating of 40 line pairs per mm were used to generate the moiré fringes. Since the use of white light and high-resolution grating produces low contrast moiré fringes, the fringe visibility was enhanced by applying contrast enhancement and filtering techniques. The Young’s modulus of the silicon cantilever material was estimated to be 165.9 GPa with an uncertainty of ±11.3 GPa (6.8%). The experimental results show that the PSSM method can be successfully applied for characterizing micro-cantilevers. Comparison of the deflection profile from the proposed method and a commercial 3-D optical profiler showed that the measurement range and sensitivity of PSSM are not affected by the poor contrast images.