Interface stress induced hardness enhancement and superelasticity in polytetrafluoroethylene/metal multilayer thin films

Abstract Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)/Al, PTFE/Cu, and PTFE/Ti multilayer thin films have been deposited in order to investigate effects of interface energy on mechanical properties. PTFE, which has a low surface energy of 19.2 mJ/m 2 , was used to introduce a large interface energy into multilayer thin films. PTFE thin film was deposited by rf magnetron sputtering using a PTFE sheet target. Al, Cu, and Ti were deposited by dc magnetron sputtering. The multilayer thin films were fabricated sequentially without breaking vacuum. Substrate used was aluminosilicate glass. The modulation period was changed from 6.7 to 200 nm. The total thickness was about 200 nm for all samples. The internal stress of metal layers changed from tensile to compressive and increased with decreasing modulation period for all of PTFE/Al, PTFE/Cu, and PTFE/Ti. Both hardness enhancement and superelasticity were observed in the results of nanoindentation measurements. The energy dissipated during nanoindentation process (one load and unload cycle) decreased with decreasing modulation period. The minimum value of the ratio of dissipated/loaded energy was