A combined experimental and computational analysis on how material interface mediates plastic flow in amorphous/crystalline composites

In this work, we study the deformation behavior in amorphous/crystalline metallic composites (A/C-MCs) through nanoindentation experiments and molecular dynamic (MD) simulations. The atomic deformation processes in both crystalline (C-) and amorphous (A-) phases near the amorphous-crystalline interf...

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Veröffentlicht in:Journal of materials research 2021-07, Vol.36 (13), p.2816-2829
Hauptverfasser: Abdelmawla, Amir, Phan, Thanh, Xiong, Liming, Bastawros, Ashraf
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:In this work, we study the deformation behavior in amorphous/crystalline metallic composites (A/C-MCs) through nanoindentation experiments and molecular dynamic (MD) simulations. The atomic deformation processes in both crystalline (C-) and amorphous (A-) phases near the amorphous-crystalline interface (ACI) are investigated and correlated with the material’s overall constitutive behavior at the microscale. Our major findings are (i) the ACIs enable a co-deformation of the A- and C-phases through “stiffening” the soft phases but “softening” the stiff phases in A/C-MCs through different micro-mechanisms; (ii) there exists an ACI-induced transition zone with a thickness of ~ 10 nm; (iii) the strong coupling between shear transformation zones (STZs) and dislocations can be quantified through carefully designed indentation experiments and simulations; and (iv) the nanoscale MD-simulation-predicted mechanisms can be mapped to the “pop-in” or “excursion” events on the force–indentation depth curves extracted from microscale experiments, although there is a length-scale gap in between. Graphic abstract
ISSN:0884-2914
2044-5326
DOI:10.1557/s43578-021-00269-4