Catastrophic vs Gradual Collapse of Thin-Walled Nanocrystalline Ni Hollow Cylinders As Building Blocks of Microlattice Structures

Lightweight yet stiff and strong lattice structures are attractive for various engineering applications, such as cores of sandwich shells and components designed for impact mitigation. Recent breakthroughs in manufacturing enable efficient fabrication of hierarchically architected microlattices, with dimensional control spanning seven orders of magnitude in length scale. These materials have the potential to exploit desirable nanoscale-size effects in a macroscopic structure, as long as their mechanical behavior at each appropriate scale – nano, micro, and macro levels – is properly understood. In this letter, we report the nanomechanical response of individual microlattice members. We show that hollow nanocrystalline Ni cylinders differing only in wall thicknesses, 500 and 150 nm, exhibit strikingly different collapse modes: the 500 nm sample collapses in a brittle manner, via a single strain burst, while the 150 nm sample shows a gradual collapse, via a series of small and discrete strain bursts. Further, compressive strength in 150 nm sample is 99.2% lower than predicted by shell buckling theory, likely due to localized buckling and fracture events observed during in situ compression experiments. We attribute this difference to the size-induced transition in deformation behavior, unique to nanoscale, and discuss it in the framework of “size effects” in crystalline strength

Fabrication and Deformation of Metallic Glass Micro-Lattices

Recent progress in micro- and nanofabrication techniques enables the creation of hierarchically architected microlattices with dimensional control over six orders of magnitude, from centimeters down to nanometers. This hierarchical control facilitates the exploration of opportunities to exploit nano-sized material effects in structural materials. In this work, we present the fabrication, characterization, and properties of hollow metallic glass NiP microlattices. The wall thicknesses, deposited by electroless plating, were varied from ≈60 nm up to 600 nm, resulting in relative densities spanning from 0.02 to 0.2%. Uniaxial quasi-static compression tests revealed two different regimes in deformation: (i) Structures with a wall thickness above 150 nm failed by catastrophic failure at the nodes and fracture events at the struts, with significant micro-cracking and (ii) Lattices whose wall thickness was below 150 nm failed initially via buckling followed by significant plastic deformation rather than by post-elastic catastrophic fracture. This departure in deformation mechanism from brittle to deformable exhibited by the thin-walled structures is discussed in the framework of brittle-to-ductile transition emergent in nano-sized metallic glasses

Microlattices as architected thin films: Analysis of mechanical properties and high strain elastic recovery

Ordered periodic microlattices with densities from 0.5 mg/cm3 to 500 mg/cm3 are fabricated by depositing various thin film materials (Au, Cu, Ni, SiO2, poly(C8H4F4)) onto sacrificial polymer lattice templates. Young's modulus and strength are measured in compression and the density scaling is determined. At low relative densities, recovery from compressive strains of 50% and higher is observed, independent of lattice material. An analytical model is shown to accurately predict the transition between recoverable “pseudo-superelastic” and irrecoverable plastic deformation for all constituent materials. These materials are of interest for energy storage applications, deployable structures, and for acoustic, shock, and vibration damping

Microlattices as architected thin films: Analysis of mechanical properties and high strain elastic recovery

Ordered periodic microlattices with densities from 0.5 mg/cm3 to 500 mg/cm3 are fabricated by depositing various thin film materials (Au, Cu, Ni, SiO2, poly(C8H4F4)) onto sacrificial polymer lattice templates. Young's modulus and strength are measured in compression and the density scaling is determined. At low relative densities, recovery from compressive strains of 50% and higher is observed, independent of lattice material. An analytical model is shown to accurately predict the transition between recoverable “pseudo-superelastic” and irrecoverable plastic deformation for all constituent materials. These materials are of interest for energy storage applications, deployable structures, and for acoustic, shock, and vibration damping

Composition-based phase stability model for multicomponent metal alloys

The vastness of the space of possible multicomponent metal alloys is hoped to provide improved structural materials but also challenges traditional, low-throughput materials design efforts. Computational screening could narrow this search space if models for materials stability and desired properties exist that are sufficiently inexpensive and accurate to efficiently guide experiments. Toward this effort, here we develop a method to rapidly assess the thermodynamic stability of a metal alloy composition of an arbitrary number of elements, stoichiometry, and temperature based on density functional theory (DFT) data. In our model, the Gibbs free energy of the solid solution contains binary enthalpy contributions and ideal configurational entropy, whereas only enthalpy is considered for intermetallic competing phases. Compared to a past model for predicting the formation of single-phase high-entropy alloys [M. C. Troparevsky et al., Phys. Rev. X 5, 011041 (2015)], our method is similarly inexpensive, since it assesses enthalpies based on existing DFT data, but less heuristic, more broadly applicable, and more accurate (70%–75%) compared to experiment