Abstract The structure of interest is a thin, metallic coating of fcc copper, of thickness of a few nanometers only, resting on a much stiffer substrate. The elastic and plastic properties of the thin coating is investigated for three different crystallographic orientations for two different coating thicknesses using nanoindentation. The force-displacement curve and the atomic arrangement are monitored during the indentation process and the precise conditions for the occurrence of so called pop-ins during loading and pop-outs during unloading are investigated. To simulate the nanoindentation process, a molecular dynamics approach is used, where an infinitely stiff spherical indenter is pushed into the coating under displacement control. The coating is modeled as a thin rectangular plate, with the bottom atom layers locked from movement in all directions, simulating the much stiffer substrate, and periodic boundary conditions are applied in the plane of the plate, simulating an infinitely large plate.
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