Nanoindentation Studies of TiB2 films

TiB2 is an important ceramic material with many poten-tial applications as thin film. This requires accurate determination of the mechanical properties. The films were deposited by magnetron sputtering and nanoindentation technique has been used to measure the mechanical prope-rties such as hardness, modulus and fracture toughness. The properties of Tib2 films on three different such as silicon, glass and steel have been studied to investigate the substrate influence. Based on the analysis of the load-depth curves, limits of film only properties have been obtained. Four composite hardness models (Johnson and Hogmark, Burnett and Rickerby, Bhattacharya and Nix and Korsunksy et.al) were applied to the experimental data. It was found that model of Korsunsky et.al gave the best fit and result. Fracture toughness of the coatings was evalu-ated using radial crack method and energy method. Both the methods gave comparable results.