Evolution of residual stress and crack morphologies during 3D FIB tomographic analysis of alumina

Three-dimensional focused ion beam (FIB) tomography is increasingly being used for 3D characterization of microstructures in the 50 nm-20 microm range. FIB tomography is a destructive, invasive process, and microstructural changes may potentially occur during the analysis process. Here residual stress and crack morphologies in single-crystal sapphire samples have been concurrently analyzed using Cr3+ fluorescence spectroscopy and FIB tomography. Specifically, maps of surface residual stress have been obtained from optically polished single-crystal alumina [surface orientation (1 ī 0 2)], from FIB milled surface trenches, from Vickers micro-indentation sites (loads 50 g-300 g), and from Vickers micro-indentation sites during FIB serial sectioning. The residual stress maps clearly show that FIB sputtering generates residual stress changes. For the case of the Vickers micro-indentations, FIB sputtering causes significant changes in residual stress during the FIB tomographic serial sectioning. 3D reconstruction of the crack distribution around micro-indentation sites shows that the cracks observed are influenced by the location of the FIB milled surface trenches due to localized stress changes.