Elastic modulus determination of a thin layer

The titanium alloy TA6V was nitrogen implanted to improve its wear resistance. In order to extract the value of the elastic modulus of the thin layer that is formed by ion implantation of this titanium alloy, a modelling taking into account different features occurring during implantation is considered, namely erosion, concentration profile and nature of the layer. Then, the elastic modulus of the thin layer is deduced. The estimated value is shown to be consistent with the formation of a TiN rich layer about 0.2 μm thick. In this paper, a procedure based on the resonance frequency of a cantilever is presented leading to the optimisation of the measurement. Then the actual modelling proposed above is described and reliability of calculated values is discussed.