Improving surface detection on nanoindentation of compliant materials

Nanoindentation is a versatile tool for monitoring mechanical properties on a local scale. Accurate knowledge of a contact area, and therefore an initial contact, is however necessary for translating the force curve into sample mechanical properties. It is shown that methods for sensing an initial contact by depth sensing instruments (DSI) may be severely in error for compliant materials. With the hardware adopted in this work, the threshold is determined by the elastic modulus; hence the error potentially increases if the material becomes more compliant. A simple method is therefore suggested to determine with accuracy the initial contact on compliant materials whereby the surface contact …