Recoverable plasticity in penta-twinned metallic nanowires governed by dislocation nucleation and retraction.

ABSTRACT: There has been relatively little study on time-dependent mechanical properties of nanowires, in spite of their importance for the design, fabrication and operation of nanoscale devices. Here we report a dislocation-mediated, time-dependent and fully reversible plastic behaviour in penta-twinned silver nanowires. In situ tensile experiments inside scanning and transmission electron microscopes show that penta-twinned silver nanowires undergo stress relaxation on loading and complete plastic strain recovery on unloading, while the same experiments on single-crystalline silver nanowires do not exhibit such a behaviour. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the observed behaviour in penta-twinned nanowires originates from the surface nucleation, propagation and retraction of partial dislo

SUBMITTER: Qin Q 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4308715 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature