Comparative study on plasticity and fracture behaviour of Ti/Al multilayers

This paper presented a comparative study on plasticity and fracture behaviour of nanostructured Ti/Al multilayers with two individual layer thicknesses λ. The nanoindentation results showed that film buckling appears in the 10 nm multilayer, whereas localised shear bands are detected in the 100 nm multilayer. The nanoscratch results indicated that localised conformal cracks and spalling are the dominant fracture mode in the multilayer with λ = 10 nm, whereas adhesive failure is observed in the 100 nm multilayer when a critical normal load is reached. The work of adhesion of the 10 nm multilayer was much larger than that with λ = 10 nm, possibly due to the high hardness and few dislocation slips by the confined layer mechanism.