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Potential-dependent dynamic fracture of nanoporous gold

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 894–898 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

When metallic alloys are exposed to a corrosive environment, porous nanoscale morphologies spontaneously form that can adversely affect the mechanical integrity of engineered structures1,2. This form of stress-corrosion cracking is responsible for the well-known ‘season cracking’ of brass and stainless steel components in nuclear power generating stations3,4. One explanation for this is that a high-speed crack is nucleated within the porous layer, which subsequently injects into non-porous parent-phase material5. We study the static and dynamic fracture properties of free-standing monolithic nanoporous gold as a function electrochemical potential using high-speed photography and digital image correlation. The experiments reveal that at electrochemical potentials typical of porosity formation6 these structures are capable of supporting dislocation-mediated plastic fracture at crack velocities of 200 m s−1. Our results identify the important role of high-speed fracture in stress-corrosion cracking and are directly applicable to the behaviour of monolithic dealloyed materials at present being considered for a variety of applications.

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Figure 1: Fracture surfaces and mechanical properties of 40 nm NPG.
Figure 2: Dynamic fracture in 40 nm NPG at 0.5 V.
Figure 3: Dynamic fracture in 40 nm NPG for samples treated at 1.2 and 1.4 V.
Figure 4: Summary of results for the normalized terminal crack velocity as a function of the electrochemical potential.

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Acknowledgements

K.S. thanks L. B. Freund for suggesting the use of the particle velocity equations described in the Supplementary Information for calculating Kdyn. S.S. thanks S. Klein for help with developing the high-speed photography protocols. This work was supported by the US DOE Basic Energy Sciences under award DE-SC0008677.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85281, USA

    Shaofeng Sun, Xiying Chen, Nilesh Badwe & Karl Sieradzki

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  1. Shaofeng Sun
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  2. Xiying Chen
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Contributions

S.S. developed the experimental protocols for the high-speed photography and performed all of the measurements on imbibed samples. X.C. performed the dynamic fracture experiments at 1.2 and 1.4 V. N.B. did all tests and analysis involving DIC. K.S. designed and supervised the research and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Karl Sieradzki.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Sun, S., Chen, X., Badwe, N. et al. Potential-dependent dynamic fracture of nanoporous gold. Nature Mater 14, 894–898 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4335

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