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Dimension-dependent mechanical features of Au-nanocrystalline nanofilms

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Abstract

For metal nanofilms composed of nanocrystals, the multiple deformation mechanisms will coexist and bring unique and complex elastic-plastic and fracture mechanical properties. By successfully fabricating large quantities of uniform doubly-clamped suspended gold (Au) nanobeams with different thicknesses and nanograin sizes, we obtain full-spectrum mechanical features with statistical significance by combining atomic force microscopy (AFM) nanoindentation experiments, nonlinear theoretical model, and numerical simulations. The yield and breaking strengths of the Au nanobeams have a huge increase by nearly an order of magnitude compared with bulk Au and exhibit strong nonlinear effects, and the corresponding strong-yield ratio is up to 4, demonstrating extremely high strength reserve and vibration resistance. The strong-yield ratio gradually decreases with decreasing thickness, identifying a conversion of the failure type from ductile to brittle. Interestingly, the Hall–Petch relationship has been identified to be still valid at the nanoscale, and K in the equation reaches 4.8 Gpa·nm1/2, nearly twice of bulk nanocrystalline Au, which is ascribed to the coupling effect of nanocrystals and nanoscale thickness.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (No. 51971070), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0200403), Eu-FP7 Project (No. 247644), and CAS Strategy Pilot Program (No. XRA 09020300). We also appreciate the support in computation experiments from High Performance Computing Center of National Center for Nanoscience and Technology.

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  1. Lijun Ma and Lena Du contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Mechanics, College of Pipeline and Civil Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, China

    Lijun Ma & Shifeng Xue

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology & University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Lijun Ma, Shu Wang & Qian Liu

  3. Department of Physics, Capital Normal University, Beijing, 100048, China

    Lena Du

  4. School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK

    Hanxing Zhu

  5. MOE Key Laboratory of Weak-Light Nonlinear Photonics, TEDA Applied Physics Institute, School of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300457, China

    Qian Liu

  6. College of Mechanical and Architectural Engineering, Taishan University, Tai’an, 271000, China

    Qing Wang

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  1. Lijun Ma
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  4. Qing Wang
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Correspondence to Shifeng Xue, Hanxing Zhu or Qian Liu.

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Ma, L., Du, L., Wang, S. et al. Dimension-dependent mechanical features of Au-nanocrystalline nanofilms. Nano Res. 16, 13400–13408 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6091-2

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