Effect of Loading Rate on Creep Properties of HgCdTe Epitaxial Films

Abstract

Nanoindentation creep studies were performed on Hg1-xCdxTe (x~0.29) epitaxial films using different loading rates of 0.5 mN.s-1, 1 mN.s-1, 2 mN.s-1 and 4 mN.s-1, keeping a constant peak load of 10 mN. A constant hold time of 20 sec at peak load was maintained for all experiments. The effect of loading rate on creep behaviour of material has been investigated. Creep displacement had shown increasing trend with increase of loading rates. Stress exponents were extracted using creep curve fitting with an empirical equation. A strong dependence of loading rate on stress exponent was observed. The value of stress exponent was found varying in the range 0.60-1.76, 0.96-2.23, 0.98-2,87 and 0.90-2.81 for loading rates 0.5 mN.s-1, 1 mN.s-1, 2 mN.s-1 and 4 mN.s-1, respectively. The change of stress exponent was attributed to change of creep mechanism. Hardness and elastic modulus were extracted from load-displacement curves and it was found that with the increase of the loading rate hardness increases, while elastic modulus remains constant. A correlation between variation of hardness and creep displacement has also been presented.