Measurement of mechanical properties using slender cantilever beams

The measurement of mechanical properties of materials only available in the form of thin sheets requires the use of load cells and displacement sensors of high sensitivity at low applied loads. These are available in testing platforms such as instrumented nano-indenters. In the current work, the elastic modulus and fracture toughness of thin cantilever beams of a representative brittle thin sheet material (300 μm thick NiO/YSZ support for a solid oxide fuel cell) were measured using a micro-/nano-indenter. The Young’s modulus and KIC were determined to be 139 ± 4 GPa and 2.13 ± 0.27 MPa m0.5 respectively using this method.