Zhanwei Liu

Recent Progress in Residual Stress Measurement Techniques

Residual stress measurement is of critical significance to in-service security and the reliability of engineering components, and has been an active area of scientific interest. This paper offers a review of several prominent mechanical release methods for residual stress measurement and recent developments, focusing on the hole-drilling method combined with advanced optical sensing. Some promising trends for mechanical release methods are also analyzed.

The digital geometric phase technique applied to the deformation evaluation of MEMS devices

Quantitative evaluation of the structure deformation of microfabricated electromechanical systems is of importance for the design and functional control of microsystems. In this investigation, a novel digital geometric phase technique was developed to meet the deformation evaluation requirement of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The technique is performed on the basis of regular artificial lattices, instead of a natural atom lattice. The regular artificial lattices with a pitch ranging from micrometer to nanometer will be directly fabricated on the measured surface of MEMS devices by using a focused ion beam (FIB). Phase information can be obtained from the Bragg filtered images after fast Fourier transform (FFT) and inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) of the scanning electronic microscope (SEM) images. Then the in-plane displacement field and the local strain field related to the phase information will be evaluated. The obtained results show that the technique can be well applied to deformation measurement with nanometer sensitivity and stiction force estimation of a MEMS device.

Novel 3D SEM Moiré method for micro height measurement

A 3D SEM Moiré Method (SMM) is proposed in this investigation for the first time for 3D shape measurement with nano-scale sensitivity. The geometric model of the 3D SMM has been theoretically established, combining the stereovision technology in an SEM with the existing principles of in-plane SMM. The Virtual Projection Fringe (VPF) generated under different conditions has been analyzed for 3D reconstructions. Two typical applications have been used to experimentally validate the theoretical model. Experimental results, with the height measurement sensitivity less than 10nm, agree well with the theoretical model we proposed. The uncertainty analysis for the method has also been performed by other auxiliary measurements.

Deformation-pattern-based digital speckle correlation for coefficient of thermal expansion evaluation of film

In this paper, a digital speckle correlation method for coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) measurement of film is developed, in which CTE is the intrinsic parameter and direct variable. Deformation pattern governed by the CTE and temperature is used to affine transform the image captured after the film is heated. If the values of CTE are properly chosen, the image after affine transformation will have a highest similarity to the original image. This turns CTE measurement into a purely numerical search of an optimal trial CTE. Results of CTEs from this method and conventional DIC methods are compared with the actual CTE, showing an improved accuracy.

A measurement method for micro 3D shape based on grids-processing and stereovision technology

An integrated measurement method for micro 3D surface shape by a combination of stereovision technology in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and grids-processing methodology is proposed. The principle of the proposed method is introduced in detail. By capturing two images of the tested specimen with grids on the surface at different tilt angles in an SEM, the 3D surface shape of the specimen can be obtained. Numerical simulation is applied to analyze the feasibility of the proposed method. A validation experiment is performed here. The surface shape of the metal-wire/polymer-membrane structures with thermal deformation is reconstructed. By processing the surface grids of the specimen, the out-of-plane displacement field of the specimen surface is also obtained. Compared with the measurement results obtained by a 3D digital microscope, the experimental error of the proposed method is discussed

A new method for the reconstruction of micro- and nanoscale planar periodic structures

In recent years, the micro- and nanoscale structures and materials are observed and characterized under microscopes with large magnification at the cost of small view field. In this paper, a new phase-shifting inverse geometry moiré method for the full-field reconstruction of micro- and nanoscale planar periodic structures is proposed. The random phase shift techniques are realized under the scanning types of microscopes. A simulation test and a practical verification experiment were performed, which demonstrate this method is feasible. As an application, the method was used to reconstruct the structure of a butterfly wing and a holographic grating. The results verify the reconstruction process is convenient. When being compared with the direct measurement method using point-by-point way, the method is very effective with a large view field. This method can be extended to reconstruct other planar periodic microstructures and to locate the defects in material possessing the regular lattice structure. Furthermore, it can be applied to evaluate the quality of micro- and nanoscale planar periodic structures under various high-power scanning microscopes.

The geometric phase analysis method based on the local high resolution discrete Fourier transform for deformation measurement

The geometric phase analysis (GPA) method based on the local high resolution discrete Fourier transform (LHR-DFT) for deformation measurement, defined as LHR-DFT GPA, is proposed to improve the measurement accuracy. In the general GPA method, the fundamental frequency of the image plays a crucial role. However, the fast Fourier transform, which is generally employed in the general GPA method, could make it difficult to locate the fundamental frequency accurately when the fundamental frequency is not located at an integer pixel position in the Fourier spectrum. This study focuses on this issue and presents a LHR-DFT algorithm that can locate the fundamental frequency with sub-pixel precision in a specific frequency region for the GPA method. An error analysis is offered and simulation is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method; both results show that the LHR-DFT algorithm can accurately locate the fundamental frequency and improve the measurement accuracy of the GPA method. Furthermore, typical tensile and bending tests are carried out and the experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Novel scanning electron microscope bulge test technique integrated with loading function

Membranes and film-on-substrate structures are critical elements for some devices in electronics industry and for Micro Electro Mechanical Systems devices. These structures are normally at the scale of micrometer or even nanometer. Thus, the measurement for the mechanical property of these membranes poses a challenge over the conventional measurements at macro-scales. In this study, a novel bulge test method is presented for the evaluation of mechanical property of micro thin membranes. Three aspects are discussed in the study: (a) A novel bulge test with a Scanning Electron Microscope system realizing the function of loading and measuring simultaneously; (b) a simplified Digital Image Correlation method for a height measurement; and (c) an imaging distortion correction by the introduction of a scanning Moiré method. Combined with the above techniques, biaxial modulus as well as Youngs modulus of the polyimide film can be determined. Besides, a standard tensile test is conducted as an auxiliary experiment to validate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Transmission-lattice based geometric phase analysis for evaluating the dynamic deformation of a liquid surface

Quantitatively measuring a dynamic liquid surface often presents a challenge due to high transparency, fluidity and specular reflection. Here, a novel Transmission-Lattice based Geometric Phase Analysis (TLGPA) method is introduced. In this method, a special lattice is placed underneath a liquid to be tested and, when viewed from above, the phase of the transmission-lattice image is modulated by the deformation of the liquid surface. Combining this with multi-directional Newton iteration algorithms, the dynamic deformation field of the liquid surface can be calculated from the phase variation of a series of transmission-lattice images captured at different moments. The developed method has the advantage of strong self-adaption ability to initial lattice rotational errors and this is discussed in detail. Dynamic 3D ripples formation and propagation was investigated and the results obtained demonstrated the feasibility of the method.

Subset geometric phase analysis method for deformation evaluation of HRTEM images.

Geometrical phase analysis (GPA) is typically a powerful tool to investigate the deformation in high resolution transmission electron microscopy images and has been used in various fields. The traditional GPA method using the fast Fourier transform, referred to as global-GPA (G-GPA) here, is based on the relationship between the displacement and the phase difference. In this paper, a subset-GPA (S-GPA) is introduced for further improvement. The S-GPA performs the windowed Fourier transform block by block in the image. The maximum strain measurement scale of the GPA method is theoretically analyzed on the basic of the phase spectrum extraction process. The upper limit is one third of the atomic spacing. The results of various numerical simulations verified that the S-GPA method performs better than the traditional G-GPA method in both the homogeneous and inhomogeneous deformation conditions, with the evaluation parameter of calculation reliability of S-GPA 10% higher than G-GPA. Specifically, the measurement accuracy of S-GPA is about three times higher than the G-GPA when calculating small strain (less than 2000με). For the large strain (greater than 150000με), the measurement accuracy of S-GPA is about 50% higher than that of the G-GPA. Besides, the S-GPA method can significantly eliminate the phase filling effect, while the G-GPA cannot. The S-GPA method has been successfully applied to analyze the strain field distribution in an lnGaAs/InAlAs supperlattice heterostructure.