PI95 PicoIndenter - Indentation of a CdS nanosphere

The PI 95 TEM PicoIndenter™ from Hysitron, Inc. is the first full-fledged depth-sensing indenter capable of direct-observation nanomechanical testing in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). This pioneering in-situ instrument is specifically designed to overcome the numerous configurational and environmental challenges presented by TEMs, and its primary function is to output a quantitative force-displacement curve to be time correlated to the corresponding TEM movie of the stress-induced deformation process. This coupling of high-resolution techniques enables a researcher to witness, for example, the microscopic origin of a measured force or displacement transient.
Nanocrystalline materials offer very high strength but are typically limited in their strain to failure, and efforts to improve deformability in these materials are usually found to be at the expense of strength. Using a combination of quantitative in situ compression in a transmission electron microscope and finite-element analysis, we show that the mechanical properties of nanoparticles can be directly measured and interpreted on an individual basis.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• nanoindentation
• picoindenter
• nanoparticle
• nanosphere