Abstract
Catastrophic brittle fracture of crystalline materials is one of the best documented but most poorly understood fundamental phenomena in materials science. Embrittlement of copper by bismuth is a classic example of this phenomenon. Because brittle fracture in any structural material can involve human tragedy, a better understanding of the mechanisms behind it is of the highest interest. In this study, we use a combination of two state-of-the-art atomic characterization techniques and ab initio theoretical materials simulations to investigate the geometric and electronic structure of a copper grain boundary with and without bismuth. Only with this unique combination of methods are we able to observe the actual distribution of bismuth in the boundary and detect changes in the electronic structure caused by the bismuth impurity. We find that the copper atoms that surround the segregated bismuth in the grain boundary become embrittled by taking on a more zinc-like electronic structure.
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Acknowledgements
This research was sponsored by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle and by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under contract HO 708/15-1.
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Duscher, G., Chisholm, M., Alber, U. et al. Bismuth-induced embrittlement of copper grain boundaries. Nature Mater 3, 621–626 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1191
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1191
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