Cyclic Deformation of Microcantilevers Using In-Situ Micromanipulation

Background The trend in miniaturisation of structural components and continuous development of more advanced crystal plasticity models point towards the need for understanding cyclic properties of engineering materials at the microscale. Though the technology of focused ion beam milling enables the preparation of micron-sized samples for mechanical testing using nanoindenters, much of the focus has been on monotonic testing since the limited 1D motion of nanoindenters imposes restrictions on both sample preparation and cyclic testing. Objective/Methods In this work, we present an approach for cyclic microcantilever bending using a micromanipulator setup having three degrees of freedom, thereby offering more flexibility. Results The method has been demonstrated and validated by cyclic bending of Alloy 718plus microcantilevers prepared on a bulk specimen. The experiments reveal that this method is reliable and produces results that are comparable to a nanoindenter setup. Conclusions Due to the flexibility of the method, it offers straightforward testing of cantilevers manufactured at arbitrary position on bulk samples with fully reversed plastic deformation. Specific microstructural features, e.g., selected orientations, grain boundaries, phase boundaries etc., can therefore be easily targeted.