Method for fast determination of thin films hardness from standard microindentation tests

Abstract

The present investigation has been carried out in order to propose a simple and fast method to determine the hardness of thin films using only standard microindentation measurements. The method is based on the consideration that at low indentation loads the predominant behaviour is that of the film. Therefore the hardness can be evaluated by extrapolating hardness measurements results at the lower loads when they are plotted as a function of the inverse of the Vickers indentation diagonal. This method was applied for the determination of the hardness of a number of films, including Al₂O₃, Cr, CrN, diamond like carbon, Ti, TiC, TiCN, TiN, TiN_x and ZrN_x, deposited onto various hard or soft substrates. It is shown that the results obtained are in good agreement with the predictions provided by other models reported in the literature.