Orientation Dependence of Hardness and Reduced Modulus of Single Crystal Sapphire Surface Measured by Nanoindentation

Nowadays, industrial products are downsized, and the structure of materials is controlled with the nanometer precision, and it becomes very important to measure the mechanical properties of local area of bulk material. Especially the hardness and the elastic modulus are important mechanical properties. The orientation dependence of hardness and reduced modulus of single crystal sapphire surface was investigated by nanoindentation. The conventional technique to measure the hardness of materials using an optical micrometer cannot evaluate mechanical properties of a local region of several µm or less. However, nanoindentation can measure mechanical properties of very small surface area of materials, and is expected to detect the micro structure dependence of mechanical properties. Nanoindentation uses very small indenter made of diamond, and measures the indentation depth. The measured depth is converted to the indented area size using the area function. The area function of the indenter can be obtained using a standard material (fused quartz) in advance. Therefore nanoindentation can measure the indented area size without using an optical micrometer. In this report, it was shown that the nanoindentation could detect the structure dependence of mechanical properties of materials. The specimen was a single crystal sapphire with c - axis surface, and the indenter was Berkovich type diamond tip. It was confirmed that the nanoindentation hardness was the lowest, and the reduced modulus was the largest, when the ridge line of indenter was oriented to the m - axis of single crystal. The nanoindentation could detect the structure dependence of a local area of mechanical properties materials.