Quantifying delamination energy in tungsten on silicon thin films through nanoindentation and nanoscratch

• Tungsten-silicon adhesion was measured through nanoindentation and nanoscratch. • Buckling followed by fragmentation was observed through nanoindentation. • Nanoscratch failure progressed directly to fragmentation. • Nanoindentation results were not parameter sensitive, contrary to nanoscratch. • Thin film fragmentation leads to overestimated delamination energy values. Quantifying delamination energy is crucial for the reliability and longevity of thin films. In this work, the delamination energy in tungsten-silicon thin films is investigated through nanoindentation and nanoscratching. Nanoindentation was also employed to assess the mechanical properties of the coating through the use of substrate corrections. Energy methods were used to analyse the nanoindentation load displacement curves to quantify the delamination energy. Finite element modelling was used to further improve the accuracy of the calculated delamination energy. Nanoscratching was found to be highly sensitive to the scratch parameters used, and the effect of scratch parameters on the critical load and delamination energy was investigated. It was found that the presence of fragmentation event in nanoscratching led to higher delamination energy values as compared to nanoindentation. Nanoindentation was found to output values closer to that of literature and were additionally not parameter sensitive, making it a reliable method of evaluating thin film adhesion.