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In situ atomic-scale observation of twinning-dominated deformation in nanoscale body-centred cubic tungsten

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 594–600 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Twinning is a fundamental deformation mode that competes against dislocation slip in crystalline solids. In metallic nanostructures, plastic deformation requires higher stresses than those needed in their bulk counterparts, resulting in the ‘smaller is stronger’ phenomenon. Such high stresses are thought to favour twinning over dislocation slip. Deformation twinning has been well documented in face-centred cubic (FCC) nanoscale crystals. However, it remains unexplored in body-centred cubic (BCC) nanoscale crystals. Here, by using in situ high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and atomistic simulations, we show that twinning is the dominant deformation mechanism in nanoscale crystals of BCC tungsten. Such deformation twinning is pseudoelastic, manifested through reversible detwinning during unloading. We find that the competition between twinning and dislocation slip can be mediated by loading orientation, which is attributed to the competing nucleation mechanism of defects in nanoscale BCC crystals. Our work provides direct observations of deformation twinning as well as new insights into the deformation mechanism in BCC nanostructures.

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Figure 1: Deformation twinning in a W bicrystal nanowire under compression.
Figure 2: Reversible deformation twinning and detwinning processes in a W bicrystal nanowire under cyclic loading.
Figure 3: Dislocation dynamics inside a W bicrystal nanowire under [112] compression.
Figure 4: Atomistic simulations of the competition between twinning and dislocation slip in a W nanowire under [112] compression.

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Acknowledgements

S.X.M. acknowledges the support from NSF CMMI 08 010934 through University of Pittsburgh and Sandia National Lab. T.Z. acknowledges the support from DOE NEUP Grant DE-AC07-05ID14517, NSF grant DMR-1410331, and HPC resources in CAS Shenyang Supercomputing Centre. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences user facility. This research was supported in part by an appointment to the Sandia National Laboratories Truman Fellowship in National Security Science and Engineering, sponsored by Sandia Corporation (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corporation) as Operator of Sandia National Laboratories under its US Department of Energy Contract No. DE-AC04-94AL85000. The authors are grateful to W. Cai of Stanford University, J. Li of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and J. Y. Huang for stimulating discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, USA

    Jiangwei Wang & Scott X. Mao

  2. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA

    Zhi Zeng & Ting Zhu

  3. Materials Science and Engineering Center, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185, USA

    Christopher R. Weinberger

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA

    Christopher R. Weinberger

  5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering and State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

    Ze Zhang & Scott X. Mao

  6. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA

    Ting Zhu

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Contributions

J.W. designed and conducted experiments, analysed data and wrote the paper under the direction of S.X.M. C.R.W., Z.Zeng and T.Z. performed computer simulations. T.Z., C.R.W. and S.X.M. contributed to data analysis and revised the paper. All the authors contributed to the discussion.

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Correspondence to Christopher R. Weinberger, Ting Zhu or Scott X. Mao.

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Wang, J., Zeng, Z., Weinberger, C. et al. In situ atomic-scale observation of twinning-dominated deformation in nanoscale body-centred cubic tungsten. Nature Mater 14, 594–600 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4228

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