Techniques for nano-scale deformation measurement

Deformation measurement of mechanical-electrical devices is important for their reliability evaluation. However, with the development of fabrication technology, sizes of mechanical-electrical devices are reduced to micro or even nano-scale. Correspondingly, testing resolution of the required metrology techniques must be improved to the same or even higher level. The commonly used characterization facility with nano-scale resolution is STM/AFM/SEM etc. In this paper, some metrology technologies based on these facilities for nano-scale deformation measurement, e.g. AFM/SEM moire and AFM/SEM digital speckle correlation are introduced, including their principles, advantages and disadvantages. Their applications in the deformation/strain measurement of MEMS and IC packages are highlighted.