Yielding and irreversible deformation below the microscale: Surface effects and non-mean-field plastic avalanches

Nanoindentation techniques recently developed to measure the mechanical response of crystals under external loading conditions reveal new phenomena upon decreasing sample size below the microscale. At small length scales, material resistance to irreversible deformation depends on sample morphology. Here we study the mechanisms of yield and plastic flow in inherently small crystals under uniaxial compression. Discrete structural rearrangements emerge as series of abrupt discontinuities in stress-strain curves. We obtain the theoretical dependence of the yield stress on system size and geometry and elucidate the statistical properties of plastic deformation at such scales. Our results show that the absence of dislocation storage leads to crucial effects on the statistics of plastic events, ultimately affecting the universal scaling behavior observed at larger scales.Comment: Supporting Videos available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.002041

High-fidelity 3D microstructural characterization of ZrB2 during hot-pressing (Invited)

Standard ultra-high temperature ceramic (UHTC) manufacturing results in components with large differences in properties due to variability in microstructural “critical flaw” distributions. Critical flaws can be any irregularity in a component, such as a secondary phase, cracks, pores, etc. This is problematic when designing reproducible UHTC components. The goal of this project is to understand how these critical flaws evolve during hot pressing of ZrB2 (a UHTC) by examining them in 3D. This study incorporates 3D imaging such as (i) preliminary in-situ high-temperature pressureless sintering X-ray µ-CT, (ii) ex-situ X-ray µ-CT, and (iii) 3D electron imaging and backscattered diffraction data collected at different stages of densification. 3D microstructure statistics along with unique observations of individual pore and secondary phase evolution will be presented. This data is brought together to give a holistic view of the densification of ZrB2 during hot pressing at multiple length scales. This data will be incorporated into a process-structure-property (PSP) database for statistical modeling to reduce uncertainty during ZrB2 processing

An Apparatus for Performing Microtensile Tests at Elevated Temperatures inside a Scanning Electron Microscope

In this paper, we introduce an apparatus to perform microtensile tests at elevated temperatures inside a scanning electron microscope. The apparatus has a stroke of 250 μm with a displacement resolution of 10 nm and a load resolution of 9.7 μN. Measurements at elevated temperatures are performed through use of two silicon-based micromachined heaters that support the sample. Each heater consists of a tungsten heating element that also serves as a temperature gauge. To demonstrate the testing capabilities, tensile tests were performed on submicron Cu films at various temperatures up to 430 °C. Stress–strain curves show a significant decrease in yield strength and initial slope for the samples tested at elevated temperature, which we attribute to diffusion-facilitated grain boundary sliding and dislocation climb.Engineering and Applied Science

Wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO

We fabricate nanotubular ZnO with wall thickness of 45, 92, 123 nm using nanoporous gold (np-Au) with ligament diameter at necks of 1.43 mu m as sacrificial template. Through micro-tensile and micro-compressive testing of nanotubular ZnO structures, we find that the exponent m in (sigma) over bar proportional to (rho) over bar (m), where (sigma) over bar is the relative strength and (rho) over bar is the relative density, for tension is 1.09 and for compression is 0.63. Both exponents are lower than the value of 1.5 in the Gibson-Ashby model that describes the relation between relative strength and relative density where the strength of constituent material is independent of external size, which indicates that strength of constituent ZnO increases as wall thickness decreases. We find, based on hole-nanoindentation and glazing incidence X-ray diffraction, that this wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO is not caused by strengthening of constituent ZnO by size reduction at the nanoscale. Finite element analysis suggests that the wall-thickness-dependent strength of nanotubular ZnO originates from nanotubular structures formed on ligaments of np-Au

Visualizing size-dependent deformation mechanism transition in Sn

Displacive deformation via dislocation slip and deformation twinning usually plays a dominant role in the plasticity of crystalline solids at room temperature. Here we report in situ quantitative transmission electron microscope deformation tests of single crystal Sn samples. We found that when the sample size was reduced from 450 nm down to 130 nm, diffusional deformation replaces displacive plasticity as the dominant deformation mechanism at room temperature. At the same time, the strength-size relationship changed from “smaller is stronger” to “smaller is much weaker”. The effective surface diffusivity calculated based on our experimental data matches well with that reported in literature for boundary diffusion. The observed change in the deformation mode arises from the sample size-dependent competition between the Hall-Petch-like strengthening of displacive processes and Coble diffusion softening processes. Our findings have important implications for the stability and reliability of nanoscale devices such as metallic nanogaps.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CMMI-0728069)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (DMR-1008104)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (DMR-1120901)United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-08-1-0325