Abstract
In cyclic nanoindentation of single-crystal silicon, an interesting phenomenon of a secondary pop-out event that closely follows the first pop-out event but with a larger critical load than the first is presented. Cyclic nanoindentation experiments under various loading/unloading rates and various maximum indentation loads were performed to verify the generality of the phenomenon of two pop-out events. Raman spectroscopy results indicate that the secondary pop-out does not induce any new phase, and the dominated end phases after the two pop-out events are still a mixture of Si-XII/Si-III phases. According to average contact pressure analysis, the phase transformation paths and the formation mechanism for the secondary pop-out event are discussed from the viewpoint of crystal nucleation and growth. The results indicate that phase transformations from the Si-I phase to Si-XII/Si-III phases are completed by two pop-out events in two adjacent indentation cycles, and the Si-XII/Si-III phases formed in previous indentation cycles strongly affect the phase transformations in subsequent loading/unloading processes.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
H.H. as an International Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) acknowledges financial support from JSPS (Grant No. 26·04048). Also we thank the reviewers for the professional review and valuable comments and suggestions.
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Huang, H., Yan, J. On the mechanism of secondary pop-out in cyclic nanoindentation of single-crystal silicon. Journal of Materials Research 30, 1861–1868 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.120
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.120