Small-scale fracture toughness of ceramic thin films: the effects of specimen geometry, ion beam notching and high temperature on chromium nitride toughness evaluation

Effects of indenter angle on micro‐scale fracture toughness measurement by pillar splitting

“…The values of K c given in Table 1 are in agreement with other measurements for Si (100), CrN and TiN using the pillar splitting technique, 6,17,18 and they are also in agreement with values obtained using other techniques, i.e., single cantilever bending and double cantilever. 15 reported a value of 3.33AE0.26 MPaÁm 1/2 for CrN using the double cantilever method.…”

“…15 reported a value of 3.33AE0.26 MPaÁm 1/2 for CrN using the double cantilever method. 17 It should also be noted that for TiN, the change in the pillar radius did not affect the measured value of K c since the smaller pillar radius produces a reduction in the splitting load. 17 It should also be noted that for TiN, the change in the pillar radius did not affect the measured value of K c since the smaller pillar radius produces a reduction in the splitting load.…”

“…6,18 Moreover, a measurement of crack length is not required, and residual stresses are not an issue because they are completely released by the FIB milling process. 6,17,18 It has also been used to estimate the fracture toughness for Li x Mn 2 O 4 battery cathodes as a function of the state of charge. Pillar splitting has been recently validated for bulk silicon (100) and several ceramic thin films (TiN, CrN) and composites (CrAlN/Si 3 N 4 ).…”

“…Pillar splitting has been recently validated for bulk silicon (100) and several ceramic thin films (TiN, CrN) and composites (CrAlN/Si 3 N 4 ). 6,17,18 For some materials, e.g., hard metals and intermetallics, splitting may not be achieved by the Berkovich indenter but could possibly be induced with a sharper indenter, e.g., a cube-corner indenter. 19 To date, pillar-splitting fracture toughness measurements have been performed only using a Berkovich indenter and a fixed Poisson's ratio of 0.25, for which cohesive zone finite element modeling (CZ-FEM) has been carried out to determine the coefficient c in Equation (1).…”

Review Article: Case studies in future trends of computational and experimental nanomechanics

“…The novelty is that sufficiently small volumes can be experimentally interrogated to give the type of physical parameters that will eventually be recoverable from atomistic simulations. To demonstrate this is possible, the following recent papers by Jaya et al 218 and Best et al 219 clearly demonstrate the experimental steps toward this goal. Expectantly, this will partially complete the path originally envisioned by St. John.…”