Characterization and Simulation of Nanoscale Catastrophic Failure of Metal/Ceramic Interfaces

XQ Fu and LH Liang and YG Wei, ACS OMEGA, 8, 20313-20322 (2023).

DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.2c07953

The catastrophic failure of metal/ceramic interfacesis a complexprocess involving the energy transfer between accumulated elasticstrain energy and many types of energy dissipation. To quantify thecontribution of bulk and interface cohesive energy to the interfacecleavage fracture without global plastic deformation, we characterizedthe quasi-static fracture process of both coherent and semi-coherentfcc-metal/MgO(001) interface systems using a spring series model andmolecular static simulations. Our results show that the theoreticalcatastrophe point and spring-back length by the spring series modelare basically consistent with the simulation results of the coherentinterface systems. For defect interfaces with misfit dislocations,atomistic simulations revealed an obvious interface weakening effectin terms of reduced tensile strength and work of adhesion. As themodel thickness increases, the tensile failure behaviors show significantscale effects-thick models tend to catastrophic failure withabrupt stress drop and obvious spring-back phenomenon. This work providesinsight into the origin of catastrophic failure at metal/ceramic interfaces,which highlights a pathway by combining the material and structuredesign to improve the reliability of layered metal-ceramiccomposites.

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