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Origin of high elastic strain in amorphous silica nanowires

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Abstract

An understanding of the origin of elastic strain is extremely important for both crystalline materials and amorphous materials. Owing to the lack of a long range order in their structure, it is arduous to dynamically study the elastic mechanism of amorphous materials experimentally at atomic scale compared with their crystalline counterparts. Here, the elastic deformation mechanism of amorphous silica nanowires (NWs) has been studied for the first time via in situ elastic tensile tests in a transmission electron microscope. Radial distribution functions (RDFs) calculated from the corresponding selected area electron diffraction patterns (SAEDPs) at different strains were used to reconstruct a structural model based on the reverse Monte-Carlo (RMC) method. The result interestingly indicates that the elastic strain of silica glass NWs can be mainly attributed to the elastic elongation of the bond length accompanied by a change in the bond angle distribution. This work is useful for understanding the high strength of amorphous materials.

中文摘要

对弹性应变起源的理解对于晶体材料或非晶材料来说都非常重要. 然而人们对非晶变形的认知远远落后于对晶体的认知. 本文采用在透射电镜中实施非晶氧化硅纳米线的原位单轴弹性拉伸, 获得一系列拉伸过程中的电子衍射谱, 通过计算它们的径向分布 函数, 结合逆蒙塔卡罗方法实现结构的重构, 从中提取出原子尺度的结构变化信息. 结果显示, 氧化硅非晶纳米线的弹性应变主要来源 于键长的弹性伸长和键角分布的变化, 并且后者的贡献更大. 本工作将对我们正确理解非晶材料的高强度提供非常重要的帮助.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Environment, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Yonghai Yue & Lin Guo

  2. Institute of Microstructure and Property of Advanced Materials, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China

    Kun Zheng & Lei Zhang

  3. Beijing Key Lab of Microstructure and Property of Advanced Material, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China

    Kun Zheng

  4. Electron Microscopy Lab, Center of Medical and Health Analysis & Department of Biophysics, Peking University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Lei Zhang

Authors
  1. Yonghai Yue
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  2. Kun Zheng
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  3. Lei Zhang
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  4. Lin Guo
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yonghai Yue or Lin Guo.

Additional information

Yonghai Yue received his PhD degree in materials science from Beijing University of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Xiaodong Han in 2012. He received Beijing Excellent Doctoral Dissertation prize in 2013. He is currently a lecturer at the School of Chemistry and Environment of Beihang University. His research interests focus on the characterization of nanomaterials, in situ mechanical study of nanomaterials, and new in situ SEM and TEM techniques. He has published more than 20 peer-reviewed papers in this field and has more than 30 patents authorized.

Kun Zheng received his PhD degree from Beijing University of Technology in 2009 and received the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of China prize in 2011. He is currently a professor at Beijing University of Technology. His research focuses on in situ TEM. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers with approximately 1100 citations.

Lin Guo received his PhD in materials science and engineering from Beijing University Institute of Technology (BIT) in 1997. He spent 20 months as a postdoctoral research assistant at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He worked as a visiting scholar in Prof. Shihe Yang’s lab at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1999. He then went to Dresden Technology University for 2 years on a Humboldt Fellowship. He is currently a professor and vice dean of the School of Chemistry and Environment at Beihang University. His research interests include the synthesis and characterization of sophisticated nanomaterials, high-strength nanomaterials with light weight, and functional nanomaterials for energy storage. He currently has more than 170 publications in this field.

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Yue, Y., Zheng, K., Zhang, L. et al. Origin of high elastic strain in amorphous silica nanowires. Sci. China Mater. 58, 274–280 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40843-015-0046-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40843-015-0046-1

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