A miniaturized TEM nanoindenter for studying material deformation<i>in situ</i>

Abstract

A miniaturized nanoindenter system has been designed and fabricated to carry out localized in situ deformation studies in a high resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM). The coarse positioning is carried out with the help of small inertial drives so that the whole system could fit into the specimen holder of the JEOL 2010 microscope. The fine positioning is achieved with a piezoelectric tube and the force is measured with the help of a four bar flexible hinge spring element. The ability of the system to correlate the force–distance data with the events observed in TEM is demonstrated.