Nice example of micropillar compression on a fused silica pillar produced by femtosecond-laser-assisted etching

Nice example of micropillar compression on a fused silica pillar produced by femtosecond-laser-assisted etching. In this case, the Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) is mounted in a Hitachi TM3030 Desktop SEM, a cheaper solution for users not requiring a top-of-the-range SEM.  

Pillar diameter is 17 µm and height 28 µm, brittle failure at 2 N and video is speeded up 16x. Such tests confirm that the granular surface morphology does not significantly affect the strength of the material.

Thanks to Remo Widmer, David Bischof, Jakub Jurczyk, Markus Michler, Jakob Schwiedrzik and Johann Michler.

ScienceDirect full paper here