Strain Hardening and Size Effect in Five-fold Twinned Ag Nanowires

Metallic nanowires usually exhibit ultrahigh strength but low tensile ductility owing to their limited strain hardening capability. Here we study the unique strain hardening behavior of the five-fold twinned Ag nanowires by nanomechanical testing and atomistic modeling. In situ tensile tests within a scanning electron microscope revealed strong strain hardening behavior of the five-fold twinned Ag nanowires. Molecular dynamics simulations showed that such strain hardening was critically controlled by twin boundaries and pre-existing defects. Strain hardening was size dependent; thinner nanowires achieved more hardening and higher ductility. The size-dependent strain hardening was found to be caused by the obstruction of surface-nucleated dislocations by twin boundaries. Our work provides mechanistic insights into enhancing the tensile ductility of metallic nanostructures by engineering the internal interfaces and defects

Mechanical Properties of Silicon Carbide Nanowires: Effect of Size-Dependent Defect Density

This paper reports quantitative mechanical characterization of silicon carbide (SiC) nanowires (NWs) via in situ tensile tests inside scanning electron microscopy using a microelectromechanical system. The NWs are synthesized using the vapor–liquid–solid process with growth direction of ⟨111⟩. They consist of three types of structures, pure face-centered cubic (3C) structure, 3C structure with an inclined stacking fault (SF), and highly defective structure, in a periodic fashion along the NW length. The SiC NWs are found to deform linear elastically until brittle fracture. Their fracture origin is identified in the 3C structures with inclined SFs, rather than the highly defective structures. The fracture strength increases as the NW diameter decreases from 45 to 17 nm, approaching the theoretical strength of 3C SiC. The size effect on fracture strength of SiC NWs is attributed to the size-dependent defect density rather than the surface effect that is dominant for single crystalline NWs