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Slip-activated surface creep with room-temperature super-elongation in metallic nanocrystals

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 439–445 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Nanoscale metallic crystals have been shown to follow a ‘smaller is stronger’ trend. However, they usually suffer from low ductility due to premature plastic instability by source-limited crystal slip. Here, by performing in situ atomic-scale transmission electron microscopy, we report unusual room-temperature super-elongation without softening in face-centred-cubic silver nanocrystals, where crystal slip serves as a stimulus to surface diffusional creep. This interplay mechanism is shown experimentally and theoretically to govern the plastic deformation of nanocrystals over a material-dependent sample diameter range between the lower and upper limits for nanocrystal stability by surface diffusional creep and dislocation plasticity, respectively, which extends far beyond the maximum size for pure diffusion-mediated deformation (for example, Coble-type creep). This work provides insight into the atomic-scale coupled diffusive–displacive deformation mechanisms, maximizing ductility and strength simultaneously in nanoscale materials.

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Figure 1: Fundamental difference in room-temperature mechanical behaviours between single-crystalline Ag and Pt nanocrystals observed by in situ TEM.
Figure 2: Surface diffusive plasticity during tensile deformation of a 20-nm Ag nanocrystal.
Figure 3: Slip-activated surface diffusional creep in Ag nanocrystals.
Figure 4: Strain-rate and diameter dependences of tensile ductility driven by crystal slip and surface atom diffusion in 〈112〉-oriented Ag and Pt nanowires subjected to uniaxial deformation at a constant strain rate.

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Acknowledgements

S.X.M. acknowledges support from NSF CMMI 1536811 through University of Pittsburgh. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science by Los Alamos National Laboratory (Contract DE-AC52-06NA25396) and Sandia National Laboratories (Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000), and at the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility sponsored by US Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research and located at PNNL. PNNL is operated by Battelle for the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-76RLO1830. F.S. acknowledges support from NSF grant No. DMR-1410646 and the computational resources provided by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) supported by NSF grant No. ACI-1053575.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Li Zhong, Yang He & Scott X. Mao

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Program, The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, USA

    Frederic Sansoz

  3. Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington 99352, USA

    Chongmin Wang

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

    Ze Zhang

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Contributions

L.Z. and S.X.M. conceived and designed the experiments. L.Z. and Y.H. conducted the in situ TEM experiments under the direction of S.X.M. L.Z. performed the experimental data analysis. F.S. carried out the computer simulations. F.S. and L.Z. developed the kinetic model. All authors contributed to discussion of the results. L.Z., F.S. and S.X.M. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Frederic Sansoz or Scott X. Mao.

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Zhong, L., Sansoz, F., He, Y. et al. Slip-activated surface creep with room-temperature super-elongation in metallic nanocrystals. Nature Mater 16, 439–445 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4813

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