Multiscale mechanical characterization of hybrid Ti/PMMA layered materials
Metal surfaces coated with organic layers are innovative materials with high potential for many industrial applications.
To overcome the limitations due to the generally poor adhesion between these two components,
polymers covalently anchored onto the substrate (‘grafted’ polymers) have been proposed as adhesives interlayers.
Their mechanical properties, however, strongly affect their performances and thus have to be characterized
at different scales. In this paper we report the mechanical characterization of thick poly(methyl methacrylate)
(PMMA) layers grafted on titanium substrates using standard nanoindentation as well as different
AFM-based techniques, namely AFM-based nanoindentation, contact resonance AFM (CR-AFM), HarmoniX™,
and PeakForce quantitative nanomechanical mapping (PF-QNM™). The specific results obtained with each
technique reflect the mechanical properties at different scales for these multiscale systems. Thus, these methods
constitute a unique set of techniques for the complete analysis of the mechanical response of advanced materials
from the macro- down to the nanoscale.