It has been my experience that the intrinsic stress in gold films is
compressive as deposited, whether by sputtering or evaporation.  The
intrinsic stress will become tensile after exposure to elevated
temperatures.  This transition can occur within as little as 20 minutes
at 90 degC. If the temperature is sufficiently low during deposition to
give compressive films, you can then reduce the stress to an arbitrarily
low value by a careful anneal.

Roger Shile

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jun Ni
Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 5:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [mems-talk] metal layer

Hallo all,

I intend to realize a metal layer with the thickness less than 1 micron,
and
its residual stress is expected to be as small as possible. Thanks to
googling, I find out an abstract claiming that the gold layer possesses
1
MPa, but I fail to figure out any information on how they conducted the
deposition. Any suggestion in this regards is definitely appreciated.