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Measuring critical stress for shear failure of interfacial regions in coating/interlayer/substrate systems through a micro-pillar testing protocol

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Abstract

Mechanical integrity of the interfacial region between ceramic coatings and substrates is critical to high performance coated mechanical components and manufacturing tools. Mechanical failure of the coating/substrate interfacial region often leads to catastrophic failure of the coated system as a whole. Despite extensive research over the past two decades, quantitative assessment of the mechanical response of coating/substrate interfacial regions remains a challenge. The lack of reliable protocols for measuring the mechanical response of coating/substrate interfacial regions quantitatively hampers the understanding of key factors controlling the mechanical integrity of coating/substrate interfaces. In this paper, we describe a new micro-pillar testing protocol for quantitative measurement of critical stresses for inducing shear failure of interfacial regions in ceramic-coating/metal-adhesion-layer/substrate systems. We observe significant differences in the critical stress for shear failure of interfacial regions in CrN/Cu/Si, CrN/Cr/Si, and CrN/Ti/Si systems. The present testing protocol has general applicability to a wide range of coating/interlayer/substrate systems.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge partial project support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF OIA-1541079) and the Louisiana State Board of Regents (LEQSF(2013-16)-RD-B-01).

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Correspondence to Wen Jin Meng.

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Mu, Y., Zhang, X., Hutchinson, J.W. et al. Measuring critical stress for shear failure of interfacial regions in coating/interlayer/substrate systems through a micro-pillar testing protocol. Journal of Materials Research 32, 1421–1431 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.516

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2016.516

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