We develop a method of poroelastic relaxation indentation (PRI) to characterize thin layers of gels.  The solution to the time-dependent boundary-value problem is obtained in a remarkably simple form, so that the force-relaxation curve obtained by indenting a gel readily determines all the poroelastic constants of the gel—the shear modulus, Poisson’s ratio, and the effective diffusivity.  The method is demonstrated with a layer of polydimethylsiloxane immersed in heptane.

The paper is accepted for publication by J. Appl. Phys, and can be downloaded from: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/suo/papers/254.pdf

We use instrumented indentation to characterize the mechanical and transport behavior of a pH-sensitive hydrogel in various aqueous buffer solutions. In the measurement an indenter is pressed to a fixed depth into a hydrogel disk and the load on the indenter is recorded as a function of time. By analyzing the load-relaxation curve using the theory of poroelasticity, the elastic constants of the hydrogel and the diffusivity of water in the gel can be evaluated. We investigate how the pH and ionic strength of the buffer solution, the hydrogel cross-link density, and the density of functional groups on the polymer backbone affect the properties of the hydrogel. This work demonstrates the utility of indentation techniques in the characterization of pH-sensitive hydrogels.

For a flexible electronic device integrating inorganic materials on a polymer substrate, the polymer can deform substantially, but the inorganic materials usually fracture at small strains.  This paper describes an approach to make such a device highly stretchable.  A polyimide substrate is first coated with a thin layer of an elastomer, on top of which SiNx islands are fabricated.  When the substrate is stretched to a large strain, the SiNx islands remain intact.  Calculations confirm that the elastomer reduces the strain in the SiNx islands by orders of magnitude.

Abstract – A data analysis procedure has been developed to estimate the contact area in an elasto-plastic indentation of a thin film bonded to a substrate. The procedure can be used to derive the elastic modulus and hardness of the film from the indentation load, displacement, and contact stiffness data at indentation depths that are a significant fraction of the film thickness. The analysis is based on Yu’s elastic solution for the contact of a rigid conical punch on a layered half-space and uses an approach similar to the Oliver-Pharr method for bulk materials. The methodology is demonstrated for both compliant films on stiff substrates and the reverse combination and shows improved accuracy over previous methods. 

In a previous paper , we have demonstrated that a microcrystalline copper film well bonded to a polymer substrate can be stretched beyond 50% without cracking. The film eventually fails through the co-evolution of necking and debonding from the substrate. Here we report much lower strains to failure (around 10%) for polymer-supported nanocrystalline metal films, whose microstructure is revealed to be unstable under mechanical loading.