Mechanical properties of single crystal tungsten microwhiskers characterized by nanoindentation

The nanoindentation results in this work showed that the one-dimensional single crystal tungsten microwhiskers fabricated by vapor deposition possess unique yielding behavior. The average hardness of the microwhiskers measured on their (1 1 1) surfaces was 8.44 GPa, significantly higher than that of the bulk tungsten ranged from 3.4 to 5.8 GPa. The hardness increase was attributed to the lacking of dislocation avalanche in the 1D single crystal tungsten that was often observed in the nanoindentation of the bulk tungsten. However, the values of elastic modulus of the microwhiskers measured on the (1 1 1) surfaces were considerably scattered, whose average value is much lower than the reported value of 410 GPa for the bulk tungsten.