“…Moreover, this technique is especially well suited for the characterization of small volumes of material, such as single grains or phases in a composite (Roa et al, 2007), dislocation dynamics (Gaillard et al, 2006), small structures (Choi et al, 2003) or thin films and coatings (Gaillard et al, 2008;Beegan et al, 2005;Roa et al, 2009aRoa et al, , 2011aRayon et al, 2011). Finally, this technique eliminates the need to visualize the imprints produced during the test for homogeneous materials, which makes the extraction of mechanical properties easier.…”