Thickness- and microstructure-dependent mechanical properties induced by surface layers in nanofilms

Y Park and S Hyun and E Koo, JAPANESE JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS, 53, 115202 (2014).

DOI: 10.7567/JJAP.53.115202

The material properties of silica nanofilms were numerically investigated by using molecular dynamics and were theoretically confirmed by a homogenization method. Stress strain curves under tensile deformations were obtained for two different microstructure films (alpha-quartz and amorphous) with various bulk thicknesses. Surface layers for both microstructure films formed by energetic relaxation were determined by coordination numbers of surface atoms, and they were shown to affect the mechanical properties of the nanofilms in a systematic manner, as predicted using the homogenization theory. We suggested a generalized prediction rule for effective material properties of nanostructured materials with interfacial phases such as surface layers in low dimensions, which is generally ignorable in the thick film limit. (C) 2014 The Japan Society of Applied Physics

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