Room-temperature super-elongation in high-entropy alloy nanopillars.

Nanoscale small-volume metallic materials typically exhibit high strengths but often suffer from a lack of tensile ductility due to undesirable premature failure. Here, we report unusual room-temperature uniform elongation up to ~110% at a high flow stress of 0.6-1.0 GPa in single-crystalline <110>-oriented CoCrFeNi high-entropy alloy nanopillars with well-defined geometries. By combining high-resolution microscopy and large-scale atomistic simulations, we reveal that this ultrahigh uniform tensile ductility is attributed to spatial and synergistic coordination of deformation twinning and dislocation slip, which effectively promote deformation delocalization and delay necking failure. These joint and/or sequential activations of the underlying displacive deformation mechanisms originate from chemical compositional heterogeneities at the atomic level and resulting wide variations in generalized stacking fault energy and associated dislocation activities. Our work provides mechanistic insights into superplastic deformations of multiple-principal element alloys at the nanoscale and opens routes for designing nanodevices with high mechanical reliability.

Theory of transformation-mediated twinning.

High-density and nanosized deformation twins in face-centered cubic (fcc) materials can effectively improve the combination of strength and ductility. However, the microscopic dislocation mechanisms enabling a high twinnability remain elusive. Twinning usually occurs via continuous nucleation and gliding of twinning partial dislocations on consecutive close-packed atomic planes. Here we unveil a completely different twinning mechanism being active in metastable fcc materials. The transformation-mediated twinning (TMT) is featured by a preceding displacive transformation from the fcc phase to the hexagonal close-packed (hcp) one, followed by a second-step transformation from the hcp phase to the fcc twin. The nucleation of the intermediate hcp phase is driven by the thermodynamic instability and the negative stacking fault energy of the metastable fcc phase. The intermediate hcp structure is characterized by the easy slips of Shockley partial dislocations on the basal planes, which leads to both fcc and fcc twin platelets during deformation, creating more twin boundaries and further enhancing the prosperity of twins. The disclosed fundamental understanding of the complex dislocation mechanism of deformation twinning in metastable alloys paves the road to design novel materials with outstanding mechanical properties.

Hierarchical twinning governed by defective twin boundary in metallic materials.

Dense networks of deformation twins endow metals and alloys with unprecedented mechanical properties. However, the formation mechanism of these hierarchical twin structures remains under debate, especially their relations with the imperfect nature of twin boundaries (TBs). Here, we investigate the intrinsic deformability of defective TBs in face-centered cubic metallic materials, where the inherent kinks on a set of primary TBs are demonstrated to facilitate the formation of secondary and hierarchical nanotwins. This defect-driven hierarchical twinning propensity is critically dependent on the kink height, which proves to be generally applicable in a variety of metals and alloys with low stacking fault energies. As a geometric extreme, a fivefold twin can be constructed via this self-activated hierarchical twinning mechanism. These findings differ from the conventional twinning mechanisms, enriching our understanding of twinning-mediated plasticity in metallic materials.

Remarkable toughness of a nanostructured medium-entropy nitride compound.

A novel medium-entropy nitride (MEN) - CrCoNiN doped with Al and Ti was prepared using magnetron sputtering. The new MEN possesses a single-phase face-centered cubic (FCC) structure, offering a superior combination of hardness (∼21.2 GPa) and fracture toughness (∼4.53 MPa m1/2) that surpasses those of most of the conventional and high-entropy ceramics. The ultrahigh hardness value is attributed to a combined effect of lattice friction, solid solution, nanograin structure and compressive residual stress. The exceptional damage tolerance of the new nitride is underlain by the formation and operation of multiple steady shear bands and amorphization mediated by dislocation accumulations. The discovery of the deformation-induced amorphization and extensive shear banding in the MEN, in conjunction with the mechanistic understanding of the critical roles of high dislocation density and large lattice resistance in dislocation-mediated solid-state amorphization, opens up a new frontier for the development of damage-tolerant MPENs for application under extreme loading conditions.

Deformation-induced crystalline-to-amorphous phase transformation in a CrMnFeCoNi high-entropy alloy.

The Cantor high-entropy alloy (HEA) of CrMnFeCoNi is a solid solution with a face-centered cubic structure. While plastic deformation in this alloy is usually dominated by dislocation slip and deformation twinning, our in situ straining transmission electron microscopy (TEM) experiments reveal a crystalline-to-amorphous phase transformation in an ultrafine-grained Cantor alloy. We find that the crack-tip structural evolution involves a sequence of formation of the crystalline, lamellar, spotted, and amorphous patterns, which represent different proportions and organizations of the crystalline and amorphous phases. Such solid-state amorphization stems from both the high lattice friction and high grain boundary resistance to dislocation glide in ultrafine-grained microstructures. The resulting increase of crack-tip dislocation densities promotes the buildup of high stresses for triggering the crystalline-to-amorphous transformation. We also observe the formation of amorphous nanobridges in the crack wake. These amorphization processes dissipate strain energies, thereby providing effective toughening mechanisms for HEAs.

Metallic nanocrystals with low angle grain boundary for controllable plastic reversibility.

Advanced nanodevices require reliable nanocomponents where mechanically-induced irreversible structural damage should be largely prevented. However, a practical methodology to improve the plastic reversibility of nanosized metals remains challenging. Here, we propose a grain boundary (GB) engineering protocol to realize controllable plastic reversibility in metallic nanocrystals. Both in situ nanomechanical testing and atomistic simulations demonstrate that custom-designed low-angle GBs with controlled misorientation can endow metallic bicrystals with endurable cyclic deformability via GB migration. Such fully reversible plasticity is predominantly governed by the conservative motion of Shockley partial dislocation pairs, which fundamentally suppress damage accumulation and preserve the structural stability. This reversible deformation is retained in a broad class of face-centred cubic metals with low stacking fault energies when tuning the GB structure, external geometry and loading conditions over a wide range. These findings shed light on practical advances in promoting cyclic deformability of metallic nanomaterials.

Exceptional high fatigue strength in Cu-15at.%Al alloy with moderate grain size.

It is commonly proposed that the fatigue strength can be enhanced by increasing the tensile strength, but this conclusion needs to be reconsidered according to our study. Here a recrystallized α-Cu-15at.%Al alloy with moderate grain size of 0.62 µm was fabricated by cold rolling and annealing, and this alloy achieved exceptional high fatigue strength of 280 MPa at 10(7) cycles. This value is much higher than the fatigue strength of 200 MPa for the nano-crystalline counterpart (0.04 µm in grain size) despite its higher tensile strength. The remarkable improvement of fatigue strength should be mainly attributed to the microstructure optimization, which helps achieve the reduction of initial damage and the dispersion of accumulated damage. A new strategy of "damage reduction" was then proposed for fatigue strength improvement, to supplement the former strengthening principle. The methods and strategies summarized in this work offer a general pathway for further improvement of fatigue strength, in order to ensure the long-term safety of structural materials.

Effect of a High Density of Stacking Faults on the Young's Modulus of GaAs Nanowires.

Stacking faults (SFs) are commonly observed crystalline defects in III-V semiconductor nanowires (NWs) that affect a variety of physical properties. Understanding the effect of SFs on NW mechanical properties is critical to NW applications in nanodevices. In this study, the Young's moduli of GaAs NWs with two distinct structures, defect-free single crystalline wurtzite (WZ) and highly defective wurtzite containing a high density of SFs (WZ-SF), are investigated using combined in situ compression transmission electron microscopy and finite element analysis. The Young's moduli of both WZ and WZ-SF GaAs NWs were found to increase with decreasing diameter due to the increasing volume fraction of the native oxide shell. The presence of a high density of SFs was further found to increase the Young's modulus by 13%. This stiffening effect of SFs is attributed to the change in the interatomic bonding configuration at the SFs.

Effects of loading misalignment and tapering angle on the measured mechanical properties of nanowires.

Loading misalignment and tapering of nanowires are usually unavoidable factors in compression and tensile mechanical property testing of nanowires. Herein, we report quantitative finite element analyses and experimental measurements on how these two factors affect the measured compression and tensile mechanical properties if they are not included in the data analysis. The results obtained show that ignoring these two factors leads to different degrees of underestimation of the critical load, Young's modulus and tensile fracture strength.

Determination of Young's Modulus of Ultrathin Nanomaterials.

Determination of the elastic modulus of nanostructures with sizes at several nm range is a challenge. In this study, we designed an experiment to measure the elastic modulus of amorphous Al2O3 films with thicknesses varying between 2 and 25 nm. The amorphous Al2O3 was in the form of a shell, wrapped around GaAs nanowires, thereby forming an effective core/shell structure. The GaAs core comprised a single crystal structure with a diameter of 100 nm. Combined in situ compression transmission electron microscopy and finite element analysis were used to evaluate the elastic modulus of the overall core/shell nanowires. A core/shell model was applied to deconvolute the elastic modulus of the Al2O3 shell from the core. The results indicate that the elastic modulus of amorphous Al2O3 increases significantly when the thickness of the layer is smaller than 5 nm. This novel nanoscale material can be attributed to the reconstruction of the bonding at the surface of the material, coupled with the increase of the surface-to-volume ratio with nanoscale dimensions. Moreover, the experimental technique and analysis methods presented in this study may be extended to measure the elastic modulus of other materials with dimensions of just several nanometers.