Hardness Measurement and Evaluation of Thin Film on Material Surface

A method for hardness measurement and evaluation of thin films on the material surface was proposed. Firstly, it is studied how to obtain the force-indentation response with a finite element method when the indentation is less than 100 nanometers, in which current nanoindentation experiments have not reliable accuracy. The whole hardness-indentation curve and fitted equation were obtained. At last, a formula to predict the hardness of the thin film on the material surface was derived and favorably compared with experiments.