Abstract
It is generally recognized that ceramics frequently offer advantages over metals in their use, such as chemical resistivity, hardness, wear resistance, high melting temperature, low density and low price. However, the use of ceramics has so far been hampered by their brittleness at low temperature. Here we report observations that could open a way to remove these limitations. We observed that conventionally brittle ceramics became ductile permitting large (~100%) plastic deformations at low temperature if a polycrystalline ceramic was generated with a crystal size of a few nm. The ductility seems to originate from the diffusional flow of atoms along the intercrystalline interfaces.
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Karch, J., Birringer, R. & Gleiter, H. Ceramics ductile at low temperature. Nature 330, 556–558 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/330556a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/330556a0
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