Effects of specimen geometry and base material on the mechanical behavior of focused-ion-beam-fabricated metallic-glass micropillars

An investigation of the focused-ion-beam-based microcompression experiments was conducted using metallic-glass micropillars. The results displayed an apparent geometry dependence of the measured pillar’s Young’s modulus if the formula in the literature was used for the analysis of the experimental data. However, if the effects of the base material and pillar geometry were taken into account with the aid of finite-element simulations, it was shown that the microcompression experiments can reach a resolution similar to that of the nanoindentation tests in the measurement of the material’s mechanical properties, and therefore provide an alternative to the nanoindentation experiment in applications that require the characterization of local mechanical properties in multi-structured/multi-phased material systems.