Yielding behavior of copper nanowire in the presence of vacancies

XM Liu and XB Yang and YG Wei, SCIENCE CHINA-PHYSICS MECHANICS & ASTRONOMY, 55, 1010-1017 (2012).

DOI: 10.1007/s11433-012-4742-5

In the present research, the measurement fluctuations of mechanical properties in nanowires (NWs) are investigated by using the molecular dynamics simulation. The large numbers of simulations are performed to study the yield behaviors of the NWs. The results have shown that the yield behavior of the smaller diameter NW is more sensitive to the presence of vacancies, and the dispersion of the measured mechanical properties for the small scale NW is larger than that for the large scale NW. Present results have also shown that vacancies escape from the bulk to the free surfaces as a result of high stress applied at the small scale systems similar to the dislocation starvation phenomenon observed in the compression test of nano-pillars, and dislocation nucleation induced by surface defect occurs after the vacancy reaches free surface leading to lower yield strength. Moreover, the strong surface vacancy interactions at the nanoscale level are also investigated.

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