Introduction
The scale of materials and machined
components continues to decrease
with advances in technology making
traditional test systems increasingly
more dif? cult to use for determining
mechanical properties. For this reason
instrumented indentation testing (IIT) or
depth sensing indentation (DSI) testing
is becoming the technique of choice for
determining mechanical properties of
materials on the micro and nano scales.
Based off of research by Sneddon,
W.C. Oliver and G.M. Pharr published
a landmark paper on IIT in 1992, which
laid the foundation for much of the
ongoing research and development
in the ? elds of materials science and
engineering. The instrument used for
this seminal paper was the ? rst design
of what has now become Agilent’s
Nano Indenter G200.