Substrate Effects on Indentation Plastic Zone Development in Thin Soft Films

Published

November 1, 2001

Author(s)

D E. Kramer, A A. Volinsky, N R. Moody, W Gerberich

Abstract

Plastic zone evolution in A1-2 wt% Si metal films on silicon and sapphire substrates was studied using nanoindentation and atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM was used to measure the extent of plastic pileup which is a measure of the plastic zone radius in the film. It was found that the plastic zone size develops in a self-similar fashion with increasing indenter pentration when normalized by the contact radius, regardless of film hardness or underlying substrate properties. This behavior was used to develop a hardness model that uses the extent of the plastic zone radius to calculate a core region within the indenter contact that is subject to an elevated contact pressure. AFM measurements also indicate that as film thickness decreases, constraint imposed by the indenter and substrate traps the film thereby reducing the pileup volume.

Citation

Journal of Materials Science

Volume

16

Issue

No. 11

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

aluminum, atomic force microscopy, hardness, nanoindentation, pileup, thin films

Citation

Kramer, D. , Volinsky, A. , Moody, N. and Gerberich, W. (2001), Substrate Effects on Indentation Plastic Zone Development in Thin Soft Films, Journal of Materials Science (Accessed February 8, 2026)