Influences of Specimen Size and Temperature on Viscoelastic Tensile Properties of SU 8 Photoresist Films

Abstract

In this paper, the influences of specimen size and test temperature on the viscoelastic properties of SU8 photoresist films are described. Films with the thicknesses of 1 خ¼m and 10 خ¼m are subjected to quasistatic uniaxial tensile tests and stress relaxation tests at temperatures ranging from 293 K to 473 K. The average glassy modulus at 293 K is 3.2 GPa, which decreases with an increase in the test temperature irrespective of specimen size. The mean fracture strain depends on film thickness as well as temperature. The fracture strain of the 1خ¼m thick films is approximately half of that of the 10خ¼m thick films at each temperature. Stress relaxation tests are conducted for constructing the master curves of the relaxation moduli. There is no apparent thickness dependence on the master curve. Above glass transition temperature, Tg, apparent activation energies for the two films are almost identical, whereas the activation energy for the thinner films is smaller than that for the thicker films below Tg. This size effect is discussed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).