The use of Laue microdiffraction to study small-scale plasticity

Micromechanics is a booming research area experiencing the development of new advanced testing methods at small dimensions. A relatively young but very popular technique involves uniaxial compressing micrometer and sub-micrometer sized objects, usually in the shape of pillars. Research in this field has focused mainly on exploring size effects in single crystal metals. This article demonstrates that Laue microdiffraction allows exploring in-situ the evolving microstructure in the transition regime from elasticity to plasticity, a feature that is not accessible with other techniques but which is essential for the understanding of small-scale plasticit

Evaluation of two thermal neutron detection units consisting of ZnS/6{}^6LiF scintillating layers with embedded WLS fibers read out with a SiPM

Two single channel detection units for thermal neutron detection are investigated in a neutron beam. They consist of two ZnS/${}^6$LiF scintillating layers sandwiching an array of WLS fibers. The pattern of this units can be repeated laterally and vertically in order to build up a one dimensional position sensitive multi-channel detector with the needed sensitive surface and with the required neutron absorption probability. The originality of this work arises from the fact that the WLS fibers are read out with SiPMs instead of the traditionally used PMTs or MaPMTs. The signal processing system is based on a photon counting approach. For SiPMs with a dark count rate as high as 0.7 MHz, a trigger efficiency of 80% is achieved together with a system background rate lower than ${10}^{-3}$ Hz and a dead time of 30 $\mu$s. No change of performance is observed for neutron count rates of up to 3.6 kHz.Comment: Submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods

The bandstructure of gold from many-body perturbation theory

The bandstructure of gold is calculated using many-body perturbation theory (MBPT). Different approximations within the GW approach are considered. Standard single shot G0W0 corrections shift the unoccupied bands up by ~0.2 eV and the first sp-like occupied band down by ~0.4 eV, while leaving unchanged the 5d occupied bands. Beyond G0W0, quasiparticle self-consistency on the wavefunctions lowers the occupied 5d bands by 0.35 eV. Globally, many-body effects achieve an opening of the interband gap (5d-6sp gap) of 0.35 to 0.75 eV approaching the experimental results. Finally, the quasiparticle bandstructure is compared to the one obtained by the widely used HSE (Heyd, Scuseria, and Ernzerhof) hybrid functional

Atomic-scale modeling of the deformation of nanocrystalline metals

Nanocrystalline metals, i.e. metals with grain sizes from 5 to 50 nm, display technologically interesting properties, such as dramatically increased hardness, increasing with decreasing grain size. Due to the small grain size, direct atomic-scale simulations of plastic deformation of these materials are possible, as such a polycrystalline system can be modeled with the computational resources available today. We present molecular dynamics simulations of nanocrystalline copper with grain sizes up to 13 nm. Two different deformation mechanisms are active, one is deformation through the motion of dislocations, the other is sliding in the grain boundaries. At the grain sizes studied here the latter dominates, leading to a softening as the grain size is reduced. This implies that there is an ``optimal'' grain size, where the hardness is maximal. Since the grain boundaries participate actively in the deformation, it is interesting to study the effects of introducing impurity atoms in the grain boundaries. We study how silver atoms in the grain boundaries influence the mechanical properties of nanocrystalline copper.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX2e, PS figures and sty files included. To appear in Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. vol 538 (invited paper). For related papers, see http://www.fysik.dtu.dk/~schiotz/publist.htm

In-situ neutron diffraction during biaxial deformation

A change in strain path may have a significant effect on the mechanical response of metals. In order to understand or even predict the macroscopic behaviour under such conditions a detailed knowledge on the microstructural evolution is crucial. Yet relatively little work has been done to quantify and understand how the inter- and intragranular strains are affected during a change in strain path. In this work we present a new multiaxial deformation rig that allows performing in situ proportional and non-proportional loading under neutron diffraction. We demonstrate the capabilities of this new setup for the case of a 316 L stainless steel. We show that the nature and magnitude of intergranular strain strongly depends on the applied stress state and demonstrate that micro yielding and internal strain recovery are responsible for the observed transient softening during a 90° strain path change. We anticipate that this new characterization method will provide previously inaccessible microstructural data that can serve as input for benchmarking current state-of-the-art crystal plasticity model