Nanoindentation of a 10 nm thick thin film

In a nanometer order nanoindentation test, roundness or truncation of the indenter tip cannot be avoided. In this paper, we have analyzed the indentation problem of a rounded triangular indentation into a layered elastic half-space by a finite element analysis and then established a method to estimate the intrinsic elastic modulus of the film from the nanoindentation data. The method was applied to analyze the nanoindentation data of a less-than-10 nm penetration depth on a 10 nm thick diamondlike carbon film deposited on a 50 nm thick magnetic layer.