GERMAN products

Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA)

Alemnis pushes the boundaries of numerous nanomechanical test methods with a high-precision nanoindenter (ASA) assembly and a range of complementary accessories, consumables and controllers.

Unique modular design:

The Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) is a modular indentation platform designed to be customized to your specific needs. Its unique modular design makes it the world's most versatile, high-performance and cost-effective instrument and it is used in some of the world's most prestigious universities and research centers.

An important milestone in the scientific community:

It is based on years of experience in the design of scientific instruments and piezoelectric transducers carried out in joint projects between EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne) and Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Thun). A publication by the inventors received the 2004 Bunshah Award from the American Vacuum Society. It is considered an important milestone in the scientific community.

Configurations: Unmatched Versatility

In SEM

The Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) comes with a custom flange and mounting adapter for installation on any scanning electron microscope (SEM) with a large enough camera.

Typical on-site SEM setup: cables from the ASA are routed through a cable tie to the controller and a laptop is provided as well as a SmarAct controller for XYZ offset.

ASA is being prepared and used within a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to test a micropillar produced by focused ion beam (FIB) milling. At the end a quasi-static column compression test and a fatigue test (cyclical oscillation) are shown.

Be unique

The Alemnis Standard Set (ASA) can be used as a stand-alone micromechanical test system on any rugged lab bench. For such ex situ operation, it is recommended to place the ASA in a dedicated cabinet and place the cabinet on an anti-vibration table to minimize noise.

Example of ASA in stand-alone upright configuration with integrated microscope (IMI) and standard cabinet (ENC)

The ASA can also be mounted under a light microscope, providing a side view for experiments under ambient conditions. This setting is typically used for materials that cannot be tested in the SEM. Many users combine the ASA with a light microscope that has a long working distance objective to facilitate sample alignment and postmortem analysis. This also allows a wider range of mounting angles to be used.

Examples of an ASA mounted under a light microscope with a long working distance objective.

SYNCHROTRON/X-RAYThere are several challenges in designing an in situ mechanical test suite compatible with synchrotron beamlines. The assembly must be lightweight as it often has to be mounted on top of several movement stages. In addition, the weight of the load frame must be distributed as symmetrically as possible with respect to the axis of rotation. In addition, the assembly must be open enough to allow unrestricted passage of the X-ray beam.



The Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) meets all of the aforementioned compatibility requirements: it is lightweight yet rigid, symmetric about the axis of rotation, and has a very open architecture that is more than sufficient for experiments on static beamlines. For specific angles or for full rotational tomography, the lateral frame elements can be replaced with an x-ray transparent material (eg, polyether ether ketone, or PEEK).

Alemnis Standard Array (ASA) mounted in various configurations on synchrotron X-ray lines. (Photos courtesy of S. Kalbfleisch, MAX IV Laboratory, Lund, Sweden, and X. Mäder and A. Groetsch, Empa, Thun, Switzerland)

The ASA can also be mounted in conjunction with an Integrated Microscope (IMI), which is an optical microscope with integrated illumination and allows repositioning accuracy between the indenter and the focus point of 10 µm. The combination of nanoindentation with X-ray diffraction (XRD) in a synchrotron beamline allows the study of many material properties. For example, a common experiment involves placing the sample under some constant stress (usually achieved by holding the applied load for several hours) and mapping the induced elastic strain field in the strain zone. These studies may pave the way to study strain profiles using synchrotron radiation during small volume micromechanical testing. In this way, the nanostructural origin of the observed deformation evolution can be understood and correlated with the deformation conditions.

Tomography

There are several challenges when designing an in situ mechanical test suite compatible with X-ray lines for computed tomography. The assembly must be lightweight as it often has to be mounted on top of several movement stages. In addition, the weight of the load frame must be distributed as symmetrically as possible with respect to the axis of rotation. In addition, the assembly must be open enough to allow unrestricted passage of the X-ray beam.

The Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) meets all of the aforementioned compatibility requirements: it is lightweight yet rigid, symmetric about the axis of rotation, and has a very open architecture that is more than sufficient for most experiments. Additionally, the compact nature of the ASA means that the sample can be brought closer to the X-ray source, improving image resolution. For specific angles or for full rotational tomography, the lateral frame elements can be replaced with an x-ray transparent material.

Example of an X-ray tomography measurement made on a polymer foam (5mm wide, 7mm high) that has been deformed by a square of fused silica (3 x 3mm) held at 10% tension for 12 hours of image acquisition. cycle (3 µm image resolution)

Alemnis Standard Assembly (ASA) mounted vertically on a commercial X-ray tomography system.

The ASA can be easily mounted on most commercially available tomography systems, either statically or on a swivel allowing full rotational tomography. A typical experiment might consist of deforming the sample material to a predefined deformation level using displacement mode.

This stress can then be maintained constantly throughout the imaging cycle and any load changes recorded by the load cell (effectively a stress relaxation experiment). It should be noted that a high-resolution 3D rotational tomography image can take 10 hours or more to complete, so the inherently high structural rigidity of ASA is particularly useful for maintaining stability throughout the imaging cycle.



The choice of indenter material is also important because a large discrepancy in X-ray absorption between the indenter material and the sample material can affect the contrast of the resulting image. The indenter must also be adapted to the size scale of the material being investigated.

True scroll mode

The unique performances of ASA's real scrolling mode are the key to understanding:

Load drops Compression artifacts Strain rate jumps Sudden load leaks in real time

Wider charging range

Widest load range on the market: From µN to 4 N