Combined simulation of fatigue crack nucleation and propagation based on a damage indicator

Fatigue considerations often distinguish between fatigue crack nucleation and fatigue crack propagation. The current work presents a modeling approach utilizing one Fatigue Damage Indicator to treat both in a unified way. The approach is implemented within the framework of the Finite Element Method. Multiaxial critical plane models with an extended damage accumulation are employed as Fatigue Indicators. Locations of fatigue crack emergence are predicted by these indicators and material degradation is utilized to model local material failure. The cyclic loading is continued on the now degraded structure and the next location prone to material failure is identified and degradation modeled. This way, fatigue crack propagation is represented by an evolving spatial zone of material failure. This propagating damage zone leads to a changing structural response of the pristine structure. By recourse to the Fatigue Damage Indicator a correlation between the number of applied load cycles and the changing structural behavior is established. Finally, the proposed approach is exemplified by cyclic bending experiments in the Low Cycle Fatigue regime

Evaluation of the thermal stability of TiW/Cu heterojunctions using a combined SXPS and HAXPES approach

Power semiconductor device architectures require the inclusion of a diffusion barrier to suppress or at best prevent the interdiffusion between the copper metallization interconnects and the surrounding silicon substructure. The binary pseudo-alloy of titanium–tungsten (TiW), with >70 at. % W, is a well-established copper diffusion barrier but is prone to degradation via the out-diffusion of titanium when exposed to high temperatures ([Formula: see text]400 [Formula: see text]C). Here, the thermal stability of physical vapor deposited TiW/Cu bilayer thin films in Si/SiO[Formula: see text](50 nm)/TiW(300 nm)/Cu(25 nm) stacks were characterized in response to annealing at 400 [Formula: see text]C for 0.5 h and 5 h, using a combination of soft and hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Results show that annealing promoted the segregation of titanium out of the TiW and interdiffusion into the copper metallization. Titanium was shown to be driven toward the free copper surface, accumulating there and forming a titanium oxide overlayer upon exposure to air. Annealing for longer timescales promoted a greater out-diffusion of titanium and a thicker oxide layer to grow on the copper surface. However, interface measurements suggest that the diffusion is not significant enough to compromise the barrier integrity, and the TiW/Cu interface remains stable even after 5 h of annealing

Investigation of defect formation and electronic transport in microcrystalline silicon deposited by hot-wire CVD

We have investigated doped and undoped layers of microcrystalline silicon prepared by hot-wire chemical vapour deposition optically, electrically and by means of transmission electron microscopy. Besides needle-like crystals grown perpendicular to the substrate's surface, all of the layers contained a noncrystalline phase with a volume fraction between 4% and 25%. A high oxygen content of several per cent in the porous phase was detected by electron energy loss spectrometry. Deep-level transient spectroscopy of the crystals suggests that the concentration of electrically active defects is less than 1% of the undoped background concentration of typically 10^17 cm -3. Frequency-dependent measurements of the conductance and capacitance perpendicular to the substrate surface showed that a hopping process takes place within the noncrystalline phase parallel to the conduction in the crystals. The parasitic contribution to the electrical circuit arising from the porous phase is believed to be an important loss mechanism in the output of a pin-structured photovoltaic solar cell deposited by hot-wire CVD

The prismatic Sigma 3 (10-10) twin bounday in alpha-Al2O3 investigated by density functional theory and transmission electron microscopy

The microscopic structure of a prismatic $\Sigma 3$ $(10\bar{1}0)$ twin boundary in \aal2o3 is characterized theoretically by ab-initio local-density-functional theory, and experimentally by spatial-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy in a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), measuring energy-loss near-edge structures (ELNES) of the oxygen $K$-ionization edge. Theoretically, two distinct microscopic variants for this twin interface with low interface energies are derived and analysed. Experimentally, it is demonstrated that the spatial and energetical resolutions of present high-performance STEM instruments are insufficient to discriminate the subtle differences of the two proposed interface variants. It is predicted that for the currently developed next generation of analytical electron microscopes the prismatic twin interface will provide a promising benchmark case to demonstrate the achievement of ELNES with spatial resolution of individual atom columns

Density functional theory calculations of the carbon ELNES of small diameter armchair and zigzag nanotubes: core-hole, curvature and momentum transfer orientation effects

We perform density functional theory calculations on a series of armchair and zigzag nanotubes of diameters less than 1nm using the all-electron Full-Potential(-Linearised)-Augmented-Plane-Wave (FPLAPW) method. Emphasis is laid on the effects of curvature, the electron beam orientation and the inclusion of the core-hole on the carbon electron energy loss K-edge. The electron energy loss near-edge spectra of all the studied tubes show strong curvature effects compared to that of flat graphene. The curvature induced $\pi-\sigma$ hybridisation is shown to have a more drastic effect on the electronic properties of zigzag tubes than on those of armchair tubes. We show that the core-hole effect must be accounted for in order to correctly reproduce electron energy loss measurements. We also find that, the energy loss near edge spectra of these carbon systems are dominantly dipole selected and that they can be expressed simply as a proportionality with the local momentum projected density of states, thus portraying the weak energy dependence of the transition matrix elements. Compared to graphite, the ELNES of carbon nanotubes show a reduced anisotropy.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures, revtex4 submitted for publication to Phys. Rev.

X-ray Absorption Near-Edge Structure calculations with pseudopotentials. Application to K-edge in diamond and alpha-quartz

We present a reciprocal-space pseudopotential scheme for calculating X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectra. The scheme incorporates a recursive method to compute absorption cross section as a continued fraction. The continued fraction formulation of absorption is advantageous in that it permits the treatment of core-hole interaction through large supercells (hundreds of atoms). The method is compared with recently developed Bethe-Salpeter approach. The method is applied to the carbon K-edge in diamond and to the silicon and oxygen K-edges in alpha-quartz for which polarized XANES spectra were measured. Core-hole effects are investigated by varying the size of the supercell, thus leading to information similar to that obtained from cluster size analysis usually performed within multiple scattering calculations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Simulation of magnetic circular dichroism in the electron microscope

International audienceAs Electron Energy-Loss Spectroscopy (EELS) and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) probe the same transitions from core-shell states to unoccupied states above the Fermi energy, it should be always possible to apply the two techniques to the same physical phenomena, such as magnetic dichroism, and obtain the same information. Indeed, the similarity in the expression of the electron and x-ray crosssections had been already exploited to prove the equivalence of X-ray Magnetic Linear Dichroism (XMLD) and anisotropy in EELS, by noting that the polarization vector of a photon plays the same role as the momentum transfer in electron scattering. Recently, the same was proven true for X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD) by establishing a new TEM technique called EMCD (Electron energy-loss Magnetic Chiral Dichroism) [ ? ], which makes use of special electron scattering conditions to force the absorption of a circularly polarized virtual photon. The intrinsic advantage of EMCD over XMCD is the high spatial resolution of electron microscopes, which are readily available. Among the particular obstacles in EMCD that do not exist for synchrotron radiation is the notoriously low signal and the very particular scattering conditions necessary to observe a chiral dichroic signal. In spite of that, impressive progress was made in the last years. The signal strength could be considerably increased, and some innovations such as using a convergent beam have been introduced. EMCD has evolved into several techniques, which make full use of the versatility of the TEM and energy filtering, spectroscopy or STEM conditions [ ? ]

Combined simulation of fatigue crack nucleation and propagation based on a damage indicator

Fatigue considerations often distinguish between fatigue crack nucleation and fatigue crack propagation. The current work presents a modeling approach utilizing one Fatigue Damage Indicator to treat both in a unified way. The approach is implemented within the framework of the Finite Element Method. Multiaxial critical plane models with an extended damage accumulation are employed as Fatigue Indicators. Locations of fatigue crack emergence are predicted by these indicators and material degradation is utilized to model local material failure. The cyclic loading is continued on the now degraded structure and the next location prone to material failure is identified and degradation modeled. This way, fatigue crack propagation is represented by an evolving spatial zone of material failure. This propagating damage zone leads to a changing structural response of the pristine structure. By recourse to the Fatigue Damage Indicator a correlation between the number of applied load cycles and the changing structural behavior is established. Finally, the proposed approach is exemplified by cyclic bending experiments in the Low Cycle Fatigue regim