Supporting Information
A microelectromechanical system for thermomechanical testing of nanostructures
Tzu-Hsuan Chang and Yong Zhu
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University,
Raleigh, NC 27695, USA
Fig. S1. SEM image showing the fabricated MEMS thermomechanical testing device that has a
serpentine heating coil that can be resistively heated.
Fig. S2. Calculated temperature distribution under 4 volt heating voltage in air. In contrast to Fig.
3(a), the air is included here.
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Fig. S2 shows temperature distribution of the MEMS stage in air. Due to symmetry, only a
quarter of the stage is shown. The temperature decreased rapidly along the shuttle due to the heat
conduction to the nearby fixed combs through air gap, which provides additional route by which
heat can be dissipated. Under vacuum environment, the only heat dissipation route is to the
anchors of the comb drive through the support beams.
In order to check if the temperature on the nanowire is the same as that on at point B and if
the temperature is uniformly distributed along the SCS nanowire, we conducted Raman-based
temperature measurement and ANSYS. As shown in Fig. S3(a), the nanowire is attached on the
middle of the shuttle between actuator and force sensor. The diameter of NW was set to be 60
nm, and the length is 2 μm. Noticed that the thermal conductivity of SCS in nano scale (~15
W/mK)1,2 is different from that in micro and macro scale, so it should be treated as a different
element type from our SCS based stage. The inset of Fig S3(a) shows that the temperature is
uniformly distributed along the SCS nanowire. Temperature difference between the center of the
nanowire (point C) and the edge of the device (point B, the same as that in Figure 2a) is only 0.2
K while the temperature of nanowire exceeds 500 K. Fig S3(b) shows the Stokes-shifted Raman
spectra of points C and B. The difference of temperature between two points is 2 K. The peak
position is a reflection of the temperature according to Eq. 3. The large difference in the spectra
amplitude is due to the fact that the probe areas in point C is much smaller than that in point B.
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Fig S3. (a) Temperature contour of MEMS device and mounted nanowire. (b) Raman spectra of
point B and C under 8 V heating voltage in air.
References:
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J. Anaya, A. Torres, A. Martín-Martín, J. Souto, J. Jiménez, A. Rodríguez and T. Rodríguez,
Appl. Phys. A 113, 167 (2013)
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