Effects of Sample Mounting on Hardness and Modulus Measured Through Instrumented Indentation

Many unaccounted factors or issues can be encountered while performing or preparing for nanoindentation that result in erroneous data. Some issues, such as improper sample surface preparation or sample surface pile-up, have been well documented in the literature with many potential solutions and recommendations, but others have received much less attention. One such issue is sample mounting, which has significant influence on the overall compliance of the nanoindentation system and can result in a large amount of error in hardness and modulus measurements. For the worst mounting conditions tested in this dataset, the hardness was measured to be approximately 11% off from the target value and the modulus was 9% off from the target value. Therefore, to better understand the effect of different mounting conditions, nearly identical fused silica samples were mounted using 11 common mounting methods and then tested with nanoindentation using the same conditions and parameters. The results show how certain mounting conditions can introduce more compliance into the system and thus produce inaccurate data in terms of both the measured hardness and modulus of the material.