A site‐specific xenon plasma focused ion beam preparation technique for microcantilever samples (1 μm ‐ 20 μm width and 1:10 aspect ratio) is presented. The novelty of the methodology is the use of a chunk lift‐out onto a clean silicon wafer to facilitate easy access of a low‐cost probe type indenter which provides bending force measurement. The lift‐out method allows sufficient room for the indenter and a line of sight for the electron beam to enable displacement measurement. An electroplated nanotwinned copper (NTC) was cut to a 3 × 3 × 25 μm micro‐beam and in‐situ mechanically tested using the developed technique. It demonstrated measured values of Youngs modulus of 78.7 ± 11 GPa and flow stress of 0.80 ± 0.05 GPa, which is within the ranges reported in the literature.
Funding
EPSRC EP/R032203/
EPSRC grant EP/P030599/1
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Department
Materials
Published in
Journal of Microscopy
Volume
279
Issue
3
Pages
212-216
Publisher
John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Microscopical Society
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Wiley under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/