How to answer the hard question

Dubbed the Precision Nanoindentation Platform (PNP) the machine was created in response to the need to test tiny novel devices, components and coatings in diverse industrial settings, said Douglas Smith, a physicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, who was part of the design team.

‘In the material science community there are more and more components and materials that just don’t exist on the macro scale,’ Smith said in a statement.

His team tested the new instrument’s performance on a synthetic polymer known as poly (methyl methacrylate), or PMMA, which is a lightweight plastic used as a thin film during fabrication processes. The work is published in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments.

The existing generation of nanoindentation instruments work by bringing a shaft with a tiny, extremely hard tip into contact with a sample and measuring how the sample surface deforms in response to a known applied force.