Nanoindentation Hardness Measurement in Piling up SiO2 Coating

In the last decades much attention has been focused on understanding the factors controlling the shape of the unloading curves obtained by the Oliver and Pharr nanoindentation analysis in order to estimate true contact area, and material parameters such as Young's modulus and hardness. In fact, it is well known that the Oliver and Pharr analysis can overestimate the hardness of materials that plastically deform due to piling up around the indentation. In recent years, different visual and analytical methods have been proposed. The visual methods are based on direct measurements of the produced indentation by scanning probe microscopy (SPM) or by atomic force microscopy (AFM). In the present work, indentation hardness of a SiO2 coating was measured and analyzed by both visual and analytical methods. The SPM-based direct method showed a quite good qualitative and quantitative literature data agreement. This method was thus developed and improved to make it dependent on curve parameters, such as applied load and penetration depth, rather than on SPM measurements of the actual contact area. A correlation of the pile up phenomenon to the m exponent of the P = B(h-hf)m relationship was also discussed.