Nanoindentation-induced phase transformation in (110)-oriented Si single-crystals

Mechanical properties of the hexagonal HoMnO3 thin films by nanoindentation

“…The detailed experimental procedures can be found elsewhere [6][7][8][9]. Before applying the loading onto the HMO specimen, nanoindentation must be conducted on the standard sample (here fused silica with Young's modulus of 68-72 GPa was used) to obtain the reasonable loading range.…”

“…Nanoindentation technique is especially well suited for characterizing the mechanical characteristics of small structures [4,5] as well as thin films and coatings [6][7][8][9]. Analysis of the load-displacement curve obtained by nanoindentation allows the primary parameters such as the hardness and Young's modulus to be obtained without visualizing the indentation.…”

Comparative Study of Phase Transformation in Single-Crystal Germanium during Single and Cyclic Nanoindentation

“…In addition, faster loading/unloading rates promoted occurrence of pop-out events (13/20 for 50 mN/s; 11/20 for 25 mN/s; 4/20 for 10 mN/s) as well as phase transformation to r8-Ge as shown in Figure 5. These facts imply that the correlation between r8 phase formation and pop-out events exist as mentioned in studies of indentation of Si [23][24][25][26][27][28] and cold indentation on dc-Ge [10]. The appearance of pop-out events alone without phase transformation in some indents might result from insufficient resolution of the Raman spectrometer.…”

“…To ensure that the residual phases were minimally affected by further phase transformation at room temperature [5,11,13], the measurement of residual phases in indents was performed within three hours after indentation. In previous studies, some specific deformation responses, for example pop-in, pop-out, and elbow have been reported in indentation studies of Si [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] and Ge [8,10,11,[14][15][16]23]. In this study, the effects of experimental parameters on these deformation responses were statistically analyzed as well as phase transformation process during both single and cyclic indentation.…”

“…In addition to the pop-in event during loading, unloading also showed some specific deformation events, i.e., pop-out and elbow as illustrated in Figure 3. The correlation between these events and phase transformation has been established for indentation of Si [23][24][25][26][27][28] and cold indentation of Ge [10]. At room temperature, ultra-fast indentation of dc-Ge also triggered these phenomena [8], but the correspondence of these events with phase transformation was not clearly addressed.…”