Plasticity of co-evaporated and sputtered multi-layered copper-chromium film
Understanding the mechanical behavior and microstructure correlation of copper-chromium films is of paramount importance both from scientific and technological perspectives.
Alloys of the nearly immiscible Cu-Cr system can be obtained from non-equilibrium routes of processing such as evaporation, sputtering and severe plastic deformation.
250nm sized micro compression pillar of a multilayered Cu-Cr composite.
This study aimed at providing insights into factors influencing the strengthening mechanisms on alloying such as grain size reduction and solid solution strengthening. Mechanical properties such as hardness and elastic modulus obtained from nanoindentation will be correlated with the microstructure analyzed by TEM and XRD of the evaporated thin films.
Direct measurements of the yield strength and post mortem investigations of the deformed volumes from compression of FIB machined micropillars in addition to nanoindentation have been used to clarify the microstructure-property correlations for the sputtered multi-layered films.