Martensitic transformation in NiMnGa/Si bimorph nanoactuators with ultra-low hysteresis

We report on the fabrication and in-situ characterization of temperature-dependent electrical resistance and deflection characteristics of free-standing NiMnGa/Si bimorph cantilevers with a NiMnGa layer thickness of 200 nm and a minimum lateral width of 50 nm. The martensitic transformation in the initial NiMnGa/Si bimorph films and nanomachined NiMnGa/Si bimorph cantilevers proceeds in a wide temperature range with a hardly detectable temperature hysteresis width below 1K. This remarkable behavior is ascribed to the internal stress in the bimorph system that exceeds the stress limit of the critical point terminating the stress-temperature phase diagram as it is known for ferromagnetic shape memory alloys. Temperature-dependent deflection characteristics reveal a competition between the bimorph effect and the shape memory effect, causing beam deflection in opposite directions. The observation of the shape memory effect strongly depends on the NiMnGa/Si thickness ratio, causing a maximum deflection change per beam length of 3% in agreement with finite element simulations.