Dear Colleagues,

Indentation tests, intimately linked to hardness measurements, are some of the easiest tests to administer. They are performed by pressing the tip of known shape and recording the properties at the surface of a specimen. The ratio between the applied load and the size of the residual imprint gives the “hardness” of the material. Since the 1980s, indentation tests have been fully instrumented and the applied load and penetration depth of the tip are continuously recorded. The resulting so-called load-displacement curve is then processed with models in order to extract a wide range of mechanical properties such as hardness, elastic modulus, toughness, and residual stress. Moreover, applied loads have been reduced to micronewtons or less, leading to new insights into the properties and mechanisms of deformation at very small scales. Taking advantage of the reduced volumes stressed during indentation, researchers use this technique for complex material analysis of, for example, coated systems, porous materials, or even multiphasic material. Instrumented indentation has now become an essential technique in the panel of mechanical characterization.

Instrumental indentation can be now combined with other techniques for in situ testing (under SEM and X-ray diffraction) or performed in a controlled environment (high or low temperature in liquid), and recent advances afford the opportunity to probe the mechanical response at a wide range of strain rates.

We invite you to contribute to the Special Issue, “Advanced Nanoindentation in Materials”, of Crystals dedicated to the development of techniques and applications of material analysis.

Dr. Alex Montagne
Dr. Fancine Roudet
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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• instrumented indentation
• mechanical properties
• mechanisms of deformation
• behavior laws
• complex materials (nanostructured, heterogeneous, etc.)
• harsh environment (temperature, strain rate, etc.)
• experiments and simulations
• coated materials