Temporal phase shifting interferometry is the most
common method for characterization of surface, profile and
displacement properties of micro devices. Common methods of
phase shifting require piezoelectric material based devices that
have inherent errors due to non-linearity. To avoid these errors
during phase shifting, a new phase shifting technique is presented in this work. This technique utilizes the advantage of
stroboscopic interferometry to create phase shifted images
without requiring any additional component for phase shifting.
The proposed method was used for surface profiling and static
characterization of the microstructures. Static characterization
was performed to identify the tip deflection and profile variation
of the microcantilever in response to various DC voltages.
A capacitor-based cantilever was tested under varied electrostatic loads and the deflection of the cantilever was extracted
using the proposed method. The deflection of the cantilever was
predicted using energy method. Static characterization results
from the proposed technique were found to be in good agreement with the predicted results.