A methodology to determine anisotropy effects in non-cubic coatings

Nanoindentation in combination with orientation imaging microscopy (OIM) has been employed to quantify the anisotropic linear elastic behavior in non-cubic thin films. In particular this novel approach has been tested on zinc coatings. It is shown that the indentation modulus notably increases from 39 GPa to 124 GPa, and the hardness from 0.60 GPa to 1.54 GPa upon increasing the angle between the direction of indentation and the hexagonal [0001] normal from 3° to 84°. The method can be extended to estimate the elastic compliances of crystallites. The following elastic compliances of hexagonal zinc grains have been found: s11 = 81.7, s12 = 5.0, s13 = − 60.7, s33 = 259, s44 = 263, all in units of 10− 13 m2/N.