Study on the calibration methods of machine compliance for depth-sensing indentation instrument

Machine compliance calibration and displacement correction are crucial to the reliability of the evaluated results using indentation technique. In order to acquire a proper method available for daily calibration of depth-sensing indentation instruments, different methods were compared. The results indicate that the calibration method proposed by Doerner and Nix is an ideal compromised one, which has the advantages such as convenience, rapidness and reliability. The machine compliance of a micro-indentation instrument was calibrated using this method, and the result machine compliance is 0.61 × 10^-6 m / N. The test experiments on Si(100) sample show that the evaluated values of Youngs modulus and hardness from calibrated instrument agree well with literature data, but the results from uncalibrated instrument are 21.5% and 2.4% lower respectively.