Influence of the indenter tip defect in classical indentation: Application to the hardness determination of DLC thin films

In this paper, we suggest to introduce the indenter tip defect into the classical hardness calculation. The proposed methodology is validated on a diamond like-carbon thin film deposited onto a tungsten carbide. Firstly, the truncated indenter tip defect length is estimated from the indentation size effect observed for the substrates which is attributed to the influence of the indenter tip defect. As a result, the tip defect is found to have the same value independently of the tested samples. Afterwards, the tip defect length is introduced into the composite hardness computation and the model of Jönsson and Hogmark is applied to predict film hardness. As a main result, the film hardness is found equal to 37.3 GPa independently of the film thickness and in a good accordance with literature data regarding the diamond hybridization sp3/sp2 ratio.