Design of a compact uniaxial stress apparatus for optical measurements

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Abstract
The design and construction of an apparatus for the application of compressive uniaxial stress is described. In contrast to older machines a hydraulic force transmission is used allowing for a very compact and lightweight sample holder/stress unit. The less bulky machine allows more accurate alignment of the stressed sample in an optical experiment. The large force the machine can exert facilitates the use of samples with a large cross section such as those desirable for ellipsometric measurements. A low budget version of the machine, based on motorbike components, is suggested. The machine is used in conjuction with a rotating analyzer ellipsometer to measure the dielectric function under uniaxial stress. From these data we are able to extract the components of the piezo‐optical tensor. We demonstrate this for the case of germanium.