title: Strong Hall-Petch Type Behavior in the Elastic Strain Limit of Nanotwinned Gold Nanowires.
abstract: Pushing the limits of elastic deformation in nanowires subjected to stress is important for the design and performance of nanoscale devices from elastic strain engineering. Particularly, introducing nanoscale twins has proved effective in rising the tensile strength of metals. However, attaining ideal elastic strains in nanotwinned materials remains challenging, because nonuniform twin sizes locally affect the yielding behavior. Here, using in situ high-resolution transmission electron microscopy tensile testing of nanotwinned [111]-oriented gold nanowires, we report direct lattice-strain measurements that demonstrate a strong Hall-Petch type relationship in the elastic strain limit up to 5.3%, or near the ideal theoretical limit, as the twin size is decreased below 3 nm. It is found that the largest twin in nanowires with irregular twin sizes controls the slip nucleation and yielding processes in pure tension, which is in agreement with earlier atomistic simulations. Continuous hardening behavior without loss of strength or softening is observed in nanotwinned single-crystalline gold nanowires, which differs from the behaviors of bulk nanocrystalline and nanotwinned-nanocrystalline metals. These findings are of practical value for the use of nanotwinned metallic and semiconductor nanowires in strain-engineered functional microdevices.
authors.affiliation: †Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, 3700 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, United States.
authors.forename: Jiangwei
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: ‡School of Engineering, The University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, United States.
authors.forename: Frederic
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sansoz
authors.affiliation: §Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Manitoba, 15 Gillson Street, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5 V6, Canada.
authors.forename: Chuang
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: ∥State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Applications for Battery of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
authors.forename: Gang
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: ∥State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Applications for Battery of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
authors.forename: Gaorong
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: †Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Pittsburgh, 3700 O'Hara Street, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, United States.
authors.forename: Scott X
authors.initials: SX
authors.lastname: Mao
keywords: Hall−Petch hardening; Nanotwin; elastic strain engineering; ideal elastic strain limit; in situ transmission electron microscopy; metallic nanowires