Original paper(Vol.47 No.8 pp.819)

Fracture strength of a thin film in a ceramics film substrate system

Takamatsu Tohru; Ichikawa Masahiro; Matsumura Takashi; Kawasaki Tatsuya

Abstract:Indenter tests on a Al2O3 film WC-Co substrate system using a Al2O3 sphere indenter were carried out to evaluate the fracture strength of the thin film coated on a substrate. Film thickness of the specimen was varied as 2.0, 4.0, 6.0mm, and two kinds of substrate with different hardness and sphere indenter with a diameter of 16, 19, 25 mm were used. The micro fracture strength was evaluated from the load at which a ring crack initiated. Initiation of a ring crack was detected using AE. The fracture strength of the film was evaluated using the micro fracture strength, the residual stress of the film, and the concept of effective area based on the Weibull distribution. Residual stress was measured by the X-ray diffraction method. It was shown that estimated fracture strength of the film a little increased with decreasing the indenter size, and the effect of the film thickness and the substrate hardness on the fracture strength of the film was hardly shown.

Key Words:thin film, ceramics, sphere indenter, ring crack, Weibull distribution, X-ray stress measurement, residual stress