Design of a mobile indenter for use in the nano range

The work aims at designing a mobile indenter for nano-range measurement and inspection of surface properties on small thin samples. The nanoindenter is capable of delivering a resolution of better than 10 nm with a piezoelectric-based actuation considered as a core element of the indenter. Emphasis has been made on the actuation analysis. Despite the inherent nonlinearity of the piezoelectric material, the ability to produce desired responses with high accuracy at low electric field looks promising. In this paper, hard and soft piezoelectric material types have been investigated for the actuation of the indenter and their natural response (without a controller) to specific positioning tasks were analysed. With low electric fields, the piezoelectric materials demonstrate a good ability to follow desired commands. The mobility of the indenter is facilitated by such small actuators; a suitable controller for ultra-high positioning with compensation for the errors due to inherent characteristics will be implemented and instrumented with the whole indenter for the nano-range measurement. © IOP Publishing Ltd.