Nanoindentation of GaAs compliant substrates

Abstract

We have investigated the indentation plastic flow into compliant GaAs wafers. The compliant substrates were fabricated by bonding two GaAs(001) wafers with an adequate twist angle. A dense network of pure screw dislocations was obtained at the interface. A Berkovitch indenter was loaded on the compliant substrates to maximum forces ranging between 600 and 4500 μN. The loading and unloading curves as well as the plastic zone size were measured and compared with that measured on bulk GaAs in the same conditions. Finally the fine structure of the dislocations generated by the indenter has been analysed.