Fracture characteristic of single crystalline silicon using nano-indentation and finite element analysis

Abstract

Nano-indentation test is used widely to determine the fracture toughness of brittle materials and to provide information on important material properties such as the Young's modulus and hardness. In this study, using nano-indentation testing, atomic force microscope (AFM), and finite element method (FEM), we performed the indentation fracture toughness and fracture strength measurement for a (100) single crystalline silicon at different load states. In addition, the loads of the phase transformation events during unloading were estimated by the load-depth curves. The phase transformation load and micro-crack propagation events at pop-out during the unloading process depended on the maximum applied indentation load.