The mechanical properties of materials usually depend on the size of the considered object. Silicon, for instance, undergoes between the macroscopic and nanometer scales, a brittle-to-ductile ...transition at room temperature. Although essential for the constantly developing Si-based nanotechnologies, the origin of this remarkable behaviour change remains undetermined for several years. The observation of the mechanisms responsible for plastic deformation in nano-objects is indeed highly challenging at the microscopic scale. One needs controlling the deformation while identifying induced individual plastic events at the smallest scale during the first stages of plasticity. This work describes nano-compression experiments on 100 nm-diameter Si nanopillars followed by post-mortem analysis of the deformed specimens through SEM and atomic resolution TEM imaging. The observed plastic deformation disrupts the usual description of low-temperature undissociated-dislocations-mediated plasticity and is comforted by molecular dynamics calculations. These results shed a new light on the transition between ductile and brittle regimes in silicon by introducing the missing link between plasticity and fracture.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Type Ib synthetic diamonds from De Beers with a low dislocation density have been deformed under confining pressure under pressure of 5 GPa in a multianvil apparatus between 900 and 1200 °C and in a ...D‐DIA experimental set up at 1100 °C and strain rate of 7 × 10−5 s−1. TEM observations of diamond deformed at 1100 °C, the lowest deformation temperature where plasticity was unambiguously evidenced are reported in this work. Two types of dislocations have been found to coexist: dissociated and perfect. No large stacking faults resulting from the dissociation splitting blow up under large stress have been observed. Numerous dipoles are found in the microstructure which can be built with perfect or dissociated dislocations. These results are discussed in relation with dislocation core configuration calculations.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The oxygen concentration and distribution in the microstructure of MgB 2 - and YBa 2 Cu 3 O 7-δ -based materials affect the formation of nanostructural defects and thus influence the critical current ...density, upper critical magnetic field and irreversibility field. For MgB 2 oxygen containing additions (Dy-O, Ti-O) in the form of nanograins occurred not to be very effective for an increase of critical current density, j c . Sn-O additions to MgB 2 can provoke even a significant decrease of j c due to a chemical interaction of Sn with MgB 2 . The processing pressure and temperature influence the defect density of the relevant pinning centers and the regularity of their distribution in doped and undoped MgB 2 as well as in MT-YBCO.
Comprehensive experimental results of fully oxidized (up to YBa2Cu3O6,9-7) melt-textured YBaCuO materials with different microstructures are presented. These microstructures are built respectively: ...(1) with a high dislocations density but almost without twins (after high temperature treatment at 2 GPa) and (2) with a high twin density, but practically free from dislocations and stacking faults (after high temperature oxygenation at 10-16 MPa). It is shown that for attaining high critical current densities and fields of irreversibility (jc(H||c, 0 T)=9·104 A/cm2, Hirr=9.7 T at 77 K), a high twin density in YBa2Cu3O6.9-7 matrix of MT-YBCO is required. The density of twins in fully oxidized materials depends on the distances between Y2BaCuO5 inclusions, larger twin densities are related to shorter distances between inclusions. The influence of phase composition of the initial powder mixtures on the distances between Y2BaCuO5 inclusions have been characterized and discussed.
Physical properties of nano-objects differ from what they are in bulk materials when the size decreases down to the nanometre scale. This behavioural change, named size effect, also applies to ...mechanical properties and has been evidenced in various materials. For instance, at low temperature, bulk silicon is known to be a brittle material while silicon nano-objects exhibit a ductile behavior. Although mechanical properties of silicon have been intensively studied over the last decades, the origin of this remarkable brittle-to-ductile transition at small scales remains, however, undetermined. In this article, a study of the plastic behaviour of nano-pillars is reported. The main results obtained from the combination of numerical calculations and experimental compression tests followed by atomically-resolved transmission electron microscopy imaging are described. We discuss the possibility for perfect dislocations to dissociate at low temperature and the underrated role of shuffle partial dislocations in plastic deformation of silicon. The formation of unexpected extended defects in the {115} planes with increasing plastic strain, also appears as a key-factor leading to the transition between ductile and brittle regimes at small scales.
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