Development of an In-Situ Nanoindentation Specimen Holder for the High Voltage Electron Microscope

Abstract

Progress on the development of an in-situ nanoindentation specimen holder for the Kratos 1.5MeV HVEM located at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, Berkeley, CA, USA, is reported. There is currently considerable work being reported on the mechanical properties (i.e., hardness, delamination, wear, etc.) of single and multicomponent thin films, nanoclusters and fibers by techniques such as nanoindenting, ref. [1] are recent examples. However, with all of these tests there has not been direct, unambiguous observation of the response or evolution of the microstructure. With many of these reports, there has been little “post-mortem” TEM characterization and there has been no real attempts to simulate these dynamically in the TEM. For the case of nano-testing of the materials the interaction volumes are often on the scale of the natural sampling volume of the HVEM. It seems natural that post-mortem and in-situ TEM characterization techniques be applied.