Alemnis Standard Assembly Integration in Vacuum Chamber

Many advanced materials require nanomechanical testing under controlled environmental conditions. Integrating the Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) into the vacuum chamber provides a versatile platform for mechanical characterization in tailored gaseous and vacuum environments. This configuration enables correlation of environmental conditions with mechanical response across controlled gas, vacuum, cryogenic, room-temperature, and high-temperature testing conditions, while maintaining a compact, modular, and highly adaptable experimental workflow.

Vacuum and controlled gas testing down to < 5 × 10⁻⁷ mbar
HTM/LTM compatible with cooling water and LN₂ connections
Customizable integration with feedthroughs, flanges, and gas lines
Integrated ASA for stable in situ nanomechanical testing

Application Examples

Vaccum chamber platform for in situ nanomechanical testing under controlled vacuum and gas environments.

ATSI: Automated Temperature Sweep Indentations

Combining the vacuum chamber with the Alemnis ASA enables automated nanoindentation across a wide temperature range under vacuum or controlled gas environments. This allows direct measurement of hardness, modulus, and deformation behavior as a function of temperature while minimizing oxidation and environmental effects.

Determining high temperature mechanical properties becomes extremely efficient using Alemnis’ novel Automated Temperature Sweep Indentation method. Continuous (fast) indents were performed automatically during a temperature ramp of 7 °C/minute.

Representative load-displacement curves from Automated Temperature Sweep Indentation experiment on fused silica.

High temperature hardness and modulus of pure uranium via Alemnis Temperature Sweep Indentation

High temperature indentation hardness and elastic modulus of pure uranium obtained by Alemnis’ Automated Temperature Sweep Indentation method.

Check out our High Temperature Module and explore its applications here.

Correlative Mechanical Mapping

The integrated ASA can perform high-resolution mechanical property mapping inside the vacuum chamber, allowing local hardness, modulus, and deformation behavior to be correlated with microstructural or imaging data. Controlled vacuum and gas conditions help isolate environmental influences and improve the relevance of structure–property relationships.

Correlative mechanical property map overlaid on the material microstructure, revealing local variations in mechanical response.

Hydrogen–Hardness Correlation Mapping

With controlled gas introduction, the vacuum chamber offers strong potential for studying how hydrogen or other reactive environments influence local mechanical properties. ASA indentation mapping can track changes in hardness and deformation behavior, supporting research on hydrogen embrittlement, coatings, and environment-sensitive materials.

Correlative mechanical and chemical mapping: Hardness distribution from nanoindentation (top) compared with the corresponding ToF-SIMS chemical map (bottom). The dashed line indicates the aligned reference position between the two datasets.

Shallow Indentation for Semiconductor Mechanical Characterization

The vacuum chamber with an integrated ASA enables ultra-low-depth nanoindentation of semiconductor wafers, thin films, and device layers. As shown by the load–displacement curve, the system can resolve mechanical response at only a few nanometers of penetration and detect small pop-in events, providing insight into the onset of plasticity, defect activation, and near-surface mechanical behavior.

Low-depth nanoindentation resolving nanoscale pop-in events in semiconductor materials.