Large Compressive Strain Research Articles

Combined Electrostatic and Strain Engineering of BiFeO3 Thin Films at the Morphotropic Phase Boundary

AbstractMultiferroic BiFeO3 exhibits a morphotropic phase boundary at large compressive strain that merges metastable phases of tetragonal (T) and rhombohedral (R) character resulting in giant ferroelectric and electromechanical responses. To utilize this functionality in devices, it is essential to understand the response of these ferroelectric phases to the environment of a nanoscale heterostructure. Here, the emergence of ferroelectricity near the morphotropic phase boundary in BiFeO3 is explored directly during thin‐film growth, using optical second harmonic generation. It is found that the epitaxial films form at the growth temperature purely in the T phase with zero critical thickness for the spontaneous polarization. Signatures of monoclinic T‐like and R‐like phases only appear upon sample cooling. The robustness of a single‐domain configuration in the high‐temperature T phase is furthermore demonstrated during growth of capacitor‐like metal | ferroelectric | metal heterostructures. Here, a reduction in tetragonality, rather than multidomain formation, lowers the electrostatic energy in the few‐unit‐cell thickness regime. For this lower tetragonality, density‐functional calculations and scanning transmission electron microscopy point to the stabilization of a novel metastable monoclinic structure upon cooling toward room temperature. The synergistic combination of strain and electrostatic phase stabilization in BiFeO3 heterostructures hence provides a basis for designing new ferroelectric phases and ultrathin ferroelectric devices.

Experiment and numerical investigation on beetle elytra inspired lattice structure: Enhanced mechanical properties and customizable responses

The elytra of the ironclad beetles possess very strong and toughness performance, to protect the body from catastrophic physical damage, owing to its unique curved geometry and layered microstructure. In this paper, inspired by the elytra of ironclad beetles, a novel configuration of lattice structure (IBCC) was developed. The digital light processing (DLP) with hard-tough resin was used to fabricate the lattice structures. The compression experiment and simulation were performed to investigate the mechanical response and deformation mechanism. The response surface model (RSM) was adopted to build a forward relationship between structure parameters and mechanical properties. A numerical method was developed to inversely design structure parameters of IBCC with “target” mechanical properties using genetic algorithm. The novel lattice structure exhibits superior stiffness and energy absorption than conventional BCC (body-centered cubic) and OCT (Octet) structures, under the same relative density. For example, IBCC shows a maximum 59% improvement (at ρ¯=9.60%) of stiffness, and a maximum 25% improvement (at ρ¯=7.40%) of SEA, with respect to OCT. Besides, the stress plateau of IBCC is more stable than OCT, even at relatively large compression strain. The superior mechanical response of the IBCC lattice structure is mainly ascribed to bio-inspired topological design and interaction effects of curved rods in the “V-shaped” region. Besides, the effectiveness of the proposed inverse design method is verified by three numerical cases. The proposed bio-inspired design strategy, mechanical enhancement mechanism, and customizable method will be helpful in expanding the prospects of lattice structures in future multifunctional application fields.

Development of an enhanced damage law for typical steel fiber reinforced concrete based on uniaxial compression and tension tests

Understanding the stiffness of a concrete structure is crucial to analyze it, particularly for statically indeterminate structures. Stiffness degradation – commonly referred to as damage – occurs with the onset of cracking or large compressive strains. For most conventional and specialized types of concrete, damage studies and models for predicting damage development are available. However, more information is needed about the damage behavior for the most common steel fiber reinforced concrete in Europe with strength class C30/37 and modern end-anchored high-strength fibers in dosages of 20–40 kg/m3. Therefore, in this study, these common steel fiber concretes were subjected to multiple load cycles in (1) uniaxial compression tests on cylinders and (2) direct tensile tests on bone specimens to investigate their damage behavior. The resulting damage was then compared to known damage laws, but none of the models predicted accurate damage results. Finally, an existing damage law for plain concrete was modified as a function of the residual flexural tensile strength—the relevant parameter for describing the performance of the steel fiber reinforced concrete. Hereby, we were able to decisively improve the agreement between experimental results and the theoretical prognosis by utilizing our modified damage law.

Electronic and thermoelectric behaviour of XCaB (X = Li, Na, K) half-Heusler alloys under strain

Impact of isotropic strain (≤±10 %) on electronic and thermoelectric properties of XCaB (X = Li, Na, K) half-Heusler alloys is studied using DFT method. LiCaB possesses the maximum structural, dynamical and mechanical stability among the considered alloys. The alloys remain ferromagnetic and most of them also retain half-metallicity even in strained conditions. Inclusion of lattice thermal conductivity (κl) lowers the total figure of merit (ZTtot) to almost half (∼0.6 at 800K) of that of electronic figure of merit (ZTel) (∼1 at 200K). Ductility detests κl but favours ZTtot. Application of strain could tune electronic band structure and/or mechanical behaviour of LiCaB, KCaB increasing ZTtot to about 0.75, 0.67, respectively, at relatively larger compressive strains, except for a negligible change in NaCaB. Thus, required modifications in electronic and mechanical properties of XCaB alloys are beneficial for thermoelectric performance and can be achieved under appropriate strain application.

Strain-Induced Robust Exchange Bias Effect in Epitaxial La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/LaFeO3 Bilayers.

The ground state of correlated electrons in complex oxide films can be controlled by applying epitaxial strain, offering the potential to produce unexpected phenomena applicable to modern spintronic devices. In this study, we demonstrate that substrate-induced strain strongly affects the coupling mode of interfacial magnetic moments in a ferromagnetic (FM)/antiferromagnetic (AFM) system. In an epitaxial bilayer comprising AFM LaFeO3 (LFO) and FM La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO), samples grown on a LaAlO3 (LAO) substrate exhibit a larger exchange bias field than those grown on a SrTiO3 substrate. Our results indicate a transition in the alignment of magnetic moments from perpendicular to collinear due to the large compressive strain exerted by the LAO substrate. Collinear magnetic moments at the LSMO/LFO interface generate strong exchange coupling, leading to a considerable exchange bias effect. Thus, our findings provide a method for tailoring and manipulating the orientations of magnetic moments at the FM/AFM heterogeneous interface using strain engineering, thereby augmenting methods for exchange bias generation.

Deformation effect on graphene quantum dot/graphane and silicene quantum dot/silicane array

This article presents a design for the two-dimensional heterostructure systems (2DHS) consisting of graphene quantum dot (QD) array in graphane (GQD/Graphane) and silicene QD array in silicane (SiQD/Silicane). First-principles method was used to evaluate the effect of deformation on the magnetism and electronic properties of these 2DHS. For the band engineering, the tuning range of the energy gap of GQD/Graphane and SiQD/Silicane 2DHS can be up to 1.20 and 1.35 eV, respectively, through strains ranging from −7% to 10 %. A strain-sharing effect is found, wherein the hydrogenated region shares a portion of strain within the QD array. This effect is stronger in SiQD/silicane than in GQD/graphane. Strain sharing enhances band coupling between the QDs and their hydrogenated counterpart in the low-energy region. This alters the electronic properties of the 2DHS and the magnetic properties of triangular and parallelogram SiQD/Silicane arrays under large compressive strain. Strain modulates the band gap of 2DHS, triggers a phase transition from semiconductor to metal in SiQD/Silicane systems under homogeneous strain, and removes the magnetism of triangular and parallelogram SiQD arrays under compressive strain. These findings suggest that the 2DHS could be promising for designing nanoelectronic devices and binary logic based on nanoscale magnetism.

The extended scaling laws of the mechanical properties of additively manufactured body-centered cubic lattice structures under large compressive strains

Additively manufactured lattice structures are porous light-weight structures with mechanical properties that are dictated both from the topology and the parent material properties. When printed from metals, these structures can withstand large continuous plastic deformation. In this paper, we focus on body-centered cubic (BCC) lattice structures under compression up to large deformation strains, and we propose relations between the slenderness ratio of struts and the following mechanical properties: Young's modulus, yield strength, hardening rate of the structure and the densification strain. We perform a systematic study using finite element modelling (FEM) to find how both material properties and lattice structures are affecting the effective mechanical properties of BCC lattice structures under compression. Based on this analysis we propose the scaling laws of the mechanical properties. The scaling laws can be explained as an extension of the Gibson-Ashby power law relations for bend-dominated structures with non-slender beams. We also discuss how rounding the connections between the struts using fillets affects the scaling laws. We demonstrate the scaling laws in the analysis of experimental results, showing the accuracy and limitations of the scaling laws in predicting the mechanical properties, with an emphasis on large deformations. In the analysis, we use experimental values published in literature, and we also present here experimental results of lattice structures printed from Inconel 718.

Strain-driven high energy storage in BaTiO3-based lead-free epitaxial thin films

In this work, the epitaxial 0.85BaTiO3-0.15Bi(Mg1/2Ti1/2)O3 (BT-BMT) films with large compressive strain were fabricated on SrTiO3 (001). The expansion of the unit cell volume and out-of-plane lattice parameter and the large built-in electric field (Ebi) in BT-BMT films indicate the existence of defect dipoles. It was found that the polarization and the breakdown strength can be optimized by the strain and the defects, respectively. Ultimately, a desirable energy density of 90.3 J/cm3 with efficiency of 62.3% was achieved. It suggests that strain can serve as a practical means to modulate the energy storage performance of ferroelectric epitaxial film capacitors.

Gaussian random field-based characterization and reconstruction of cancellous bone microstructure considering the constraint of correlation structure

The macro scale physical properties of cancellous bone materials are governed by the microstructural features, which is of great significance for the multi-scale research of cancellous bone and the inverse design of bone-mimicking materials. Therefore, it is essential to characterize the natural cancellous bone samples, and reconstruct the microstructures with the biomimetic osteointegration and mechanical properties. In this research, a novel approach for the characterization and reconstruction of cancellous bone was proposed, based on the medical image analysis and anisotropic three-dimensional Gaussian random field (GRF). The geometric similarity, i.e. the interface curvature distribution (ISD), was meticulously studied, which is important to the osteointegration ability. And the mechanical properties were validated by the stress-strain curves under the large compressive strain simulated by the smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) method. In addition, the effects of the generation parameters of GRF-based biomimetic microstructures on the apparent properties were analyzed. The ISD results demonstrated that both GRF and micro-CT groups had the similar columnar morphological properties, while the latter had more hyperbolic features. And it was found that the GRF-based biomimetic microstructures and the natural bone samples based on micro-CT (MCT) had the similar failure mode. The concordance correlation coefficient between MCT and GRF pairs was 0.8685, with a Pearson ρ value of 0.8804, and significance level p<0.0001. The Bland-Altman LoA was 0.1647 MPa with 95 % (1.96SD) lower and upper bound value between −0.2892 and 0.6185 MPa. The two groups had almost the same elastic modulus with the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 7.84 %. While the yield stress and total conversion energy of the GRF-based samples were lower than those of the natural bone samples, and the MAPE were 16.99 % and 16.27 %, respectively. Although it meant the lower structural efficiency, the huge design space of this approach and advanced 3D printing technology can provide great potential for the design of orthopedic implants.

Investigating the large strain compression properties of PLA parts manufactured by FDM using experiments and constitutive modeling

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to experimentally investigate the large deformation compression characteristics of fused deposition modelling (FDM)-printed poly lactic acid (PLA), considering the combined effect of infill density and strain rate, and to develop a constitutive viscoplastic model that can incorporate the infill density to predict the experimental result.Design/methodology/approachThe experimental approach focuses on strain rate-dependent (2.1 × 10−4, 2.1 × 10−3, and 2.1 × 10−2 s−1) compression testing for varied infill densities. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) imaging of compressed materials is used to investigate deformation processes. A hyperelastic-viscoplastic constitutive model is constructed that can predict mechanical deformations at different strain rates and infill densities.FindingsThe yield stress of PLA increased with increase in strain rate and infill density. However, higher degree of strain-softening response was witnessed for the strain rate corresponding to 2.1 × 10−2 s−1. While filament splitting and twisting were identified as the damage mechanisms at higher strain rates, matrix crazing was observed as the primary deformation mechanism for higher infill density (95%). The developed constitutive model captured yield stress and post-yield softening behaviour of FDM build PLA samples with a high R2 value of 0.99.Originality/valueThis paper addresses the need to analyse and predict the mechanical response of FDM print polymers (PLA) undergoing extensive strain-compressive loading through a hyperelastic-viscoplastic constitutive model. This study links combined effects of the printing parameter (infill density) with the experimental parameter (strain rate).

3D Tiled Auxetic Metamaterial: A New Family of Mechanical Metamaterial with High Resilience and Mechanical Hysteresis.

For artificial materials, desired properties often conflict. For example, engineering materials often achieve high energy dissipation by sacrificing resilience and vice versa, or desired auxeticity by losing their isotropy, which limits their performance and applications. To solve these conflicts, a strategy is proposed to create novel mechanical metamaterial via 3D space filling tiles with engaging key-channel pairs, exemplified via auxetic 3D keyed-octahedron-cuboctahedron metamaterials. This metamaterial shows high resilience while achieving large mechanical hysteresis synergistically under large compressive strain. Especially, this metamaterial exhibits ideal isotropy approaching the theoretical limit of isotropic Poisson's ratio, -1, as rarely seen in existing 3D mechanical metamaterials. In addition, the new class of metamaterials provides wide tunability on mechanical properties and behaviors, including an unusual coupled auxeticity and twisting behavior under normal compression. The designing methodology is illustrated by the integral of numerical modeling, theoretical analysis, and experimental characterization. The new mechanical metamaterials have broad applications in actuators and dampers, soft robotics, biomedical materials, and engineering materials/systems for energy dissipation.

Programmable and resilient metamaterials with anisotropic and non-linear mechanical responses composed exclusively of stiff constituents.

Recently, significant progress has been made in the field of flexible bulk metamaterials composed of soft and elastic materials, unlocking the potential for achieving programmable non-linear mechanical responses, such as shape morphing, energy absorption, and information processing. However, the majority of these metamaterials utilize expensive hyperelastic materials and require complex fabrication processes. Additionally, constructing eco-friendly stiff constituents for these metamaterials remains challenging due to their limited elastic limit strains (<0.1). Here, we propose a systematic design strategy by combining curved beams with chiral metastructures to generate a family of three-dimensional programmable resilient mechanical metamaterials without relying on flexible or hyperelastic constituents. These tiled metamaterials demonstrate robust, anisotropic and non-linear resilience under large elastic compression strains (>0.75), while exhibiting a programmable effective modulus reduction of nearly 6 orders of magnitude compared to the native stiff components. Furthermore, leveraging their stable resilience under high-frequency stimuli, we successfully developed a meter-scale soft robot capable of traversing complex narrow scenarios on demand without the need for flexible materials or sophisticated pipelines. We anticipate that these mechanical metamaterials could serve as a universal platform for programmable active dampers, modular flexible robots, and medical rehabilitation equipment at various scales.

Anti-reflective MX (M = Sc and Y; X = N, P, As, Sb and Bi) monolayers: structural, electronic and optical study

In this paper, the structural, electronic and optical properties of tetragonal binary monolayers of MX (M = Sc, Y; X = As, Bi, N, P, Sb) are investigated using the density functional theory. The optical study demonstrates that ScN and YN compounds are promising anti-reflective materials. All compounds are found to be semiconductors with a bandgap in the range of 0.45–1.8 eV. Among these compounds, ScN and YN have a direct bandgap at Γ-point while the remainings demonstrate an indirect bandgap. It is found that the structural anisotropy controls the anisotropy of the electronic properties. The biaxial strain analysis shows that YBi monolayer has the maximum linear strain bandgap dependency, making it a suitable candidate for pressure sensing applications. The ScN and YN monolayers demonstrate a phase transition from semiconductive to Dirac semi-metallic characteristics at large compressive strains.

Large Biaxial Compressive Strain Tuning of Neutral and Charged Excitons in Single-Layer Transition Metal Dichalcogenides.

The absorption and emission of light in single-layer transition metal dichalcogenides are governed by the formation of excitonic quasiparticles. Strain provides a powerful technique to tune the optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional materials and thus to adjust their exciton energies. The effects of large compressive strain in the optical spectrum of two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors remain rather unexplored compared to those of tensile strain, mainly due to experimental constraints. Here, we induced large, uniform, biaxial compressive strain (∼1.2%) by cooling, down to 10 K, single-layer WS2, MoS2, WSe2, and MoSe2 deposited on polycarbonate substrates. We observed a significant strain-induced modulation of neutral exciton energies, with blue shifts up to 160 meV, larger than in any previous experiments. Our results indicate a remarkably efficient transfer of compressive strain, demonstrated by gauge factor values exceeding previous results and approaching theoretical expectations. At low temperatures, we investigated the effect of compressive strain on the resonances associated with the formation of charged excitons. In WS2, a notable reduction of gauge factors for charged compared to neutral excitons suggests an increase in their binding energy, which likely results from the effects of strain added to the influence of the polymeric substrate.

Properties, Applications and Recent Developments of Cellular Solid Materials: A Review.

Cellular solids are materials made up of cells with solid edges or faces that are piled together to fit a certain space. These materials are already present in nature and have already been utilized in the past. Some examples are wood, cork, sponge and coral. New cellular solids replicating natural ones have been manufactured, such as honeycomb materials and foams, which have a variety of applications because of their special characteristics such as being lightweight, insulation, cushioning and energy absorption derived from the cellular structure. Cellular solids have interesting thermal, physical and mechanical properties in comparison with bulk solids: density, thermal conductivity, Young's modulus and compressive strength. This huge extension of properties allows for applications that cannot easily be extended to fully dense solids and offers enormous potential for engineering creativity. Their Low densities allow lightweight and rigid components to be designed, such as sandwich panels and large portable and floating structures of all types. Their low thermal conductivity enables cheap and reliable thermal insulation, which can only be improved by expensive vacuum-based methods. Their low stiffness makes the foams ideal for a wide range of applications, such as shock absorbers. Low strengths and large compressive strains make the foams attractive for energy-absorbing applications. In this work, their main properties, applications (real and potential) and recent developments are presented, summarized and discussed.

Dual-modal piezotronic transistor for highly sensitive vertical force sensing and lateral strain sensing

Mechanical sensors are mainly divided into two types (vertical force sensing and lateral strain sensing). Up to now, one sensor with two working modes is still a challenge. Here, we demonstrate a structural design concept combing a piezoelectric nano/microwire with a flexible polymer with protrusions that enables a dual-modal piezotronic transistor (DPT) with two working modes for highly sensitive vertical force sensing and lateral strain sensing. For vertical force sensing, DPT exhibits a force sensitivity up to 221.5 N−1 and a minimum identifiable force down to 21 mN, corresponding to a pressure sensitivity of 1.759 eV/MPa. For lateral strain sensing, DPT can respond to a large compression strain (~5.8%) with an on/off ratio up to 386.57 and a gauge factor up to 8988.6. It is a universal design that can integrate vertical force sensing and lateral strain sensing into only one nanodevice, providing a feasible strategy for multimodal devices.

Coarse-grained molecular simulation of the role of curing rates on the structure and strength of polyurea

We present a reactive coarse-grained model that can more accurately simulate the interplay between step-growth polymerization and phase segregation in elastomeric copolymers such as polyurea. The coarse-grained force fields were calibrated by the iterative Boltzmann inversion method to reproduce the target structural distributions sampled from atomistic simulations of partially-cured, oligomeric prepolymers. Using this coarse-grained model, polymerization simulations were performed at simulated curing rate spanning five decades to draw connections between the rate of polymerization, the microstructure, and the high-strain rate mechanical properties of the cured elastomer. Analysis of the simulated polyurea systems suggests that curing at faster reaction rates leads to hard domains with smaller diameter ligaments that are more strongly interconnected with bridging soft segments than those formed at slow curing rates. Simulated uniaxial compression of the cured systems indicates that the key process-induced microstructural variation influencing the hardening behavior of the elastomer is the fraction of soft segments that bridge across hard domain ligaments, which can lead to a substantial increase in the flow stress at large compressive strains.

Microstructural Control by Cooling Rate in β-type and Sintered Ti-3.6Fe-5Zr-0.2B (Mass%) Alloy Fabricated by Spark Plasma Sintering and Heat Treatment

The β-type and sintered Ti-3.6Fe-5Zr-0.2B (mass%) alloy has been consolidated by spark plasma sintering, followed by a β solution treatment (ST). In order to obtain a high-strength ductile balance, water quenching or air cooling is used after ST. Modification of sintering conditions, which leads to 100% of the relative density, improves the tensile ductility. The Fe addition causes a large local lattice and compressive strain to the bcc Ti lattice; in the water-quenched sample, α” martensite phases appear in the β matrix. When air cooling is applied after the ST, bimodal α lath phases are instead precipitated during the cooling in nanoscale, and the formation of α” martensite phases is suppressed. This results in high strength and better ductility when compared with those in the water-quenched sample, particularly in tensile properties. The air-cooled sample reveals attractive mechanical properties in both tension and compression modes.

Designing shell-layer-core architecture in Ti-based composites to achieve enhanced strength and plasticity

Developing novel high-strength titanium structural materials to achieve lightweight contributes to reducing CO2 emission. In by the multilayered structure of three-piece golf balls, we design a multimodal shell-layer-core microstructure in Ti68.8Nb13.6Co6Cu5.1Al6.5 composites and reveal the underlying mechanism of their microstructure evolution and mechanical properties. Herein, the multimodal shell-layer-core microstructure was attained via semi-solid sintering caused by the melting of CoTi2 phase with appropriate sintering process. Specifically, the ultrafine CoTi2 twins distributed along micron-sized β-Ti matrix form a shell structure around the β-Ti layer, while the nanostructured α' martensite is embedded and agglomerated in the center area of β-Ti matrix to construct a core region. Fundamentally, the unique structure stemmed from the appropriate sintering temperature, rapid cooling rate, and the suitable holding pressure during the sintering process. Such composites exhibited high compressive yield strength of 1614 MPa, ultimate strength of 3119 MPa with a large compressive strain of 38.6%, representing the highest values reported thus far in the literature. The high yield strength was attributed to the dislocation-blocking effect of CoTi2 twins and nanostructured α' martensite, while the improved ductility results from the micro-sized β-Ti matrix and the strain-hardening effect of α' martensite. This work provides fundamental insight into developing and fabricating strong-yet-ductile Ti-based composite materials for demanding structural applications.

Measuring microscale mechanical properties of PVdF binder phase and the binder-particle interface using micromechanical testing

In this study, we developed a robust methodology for extracting the mechanical properties of individual components in complex systems such as Li-ion battery electrodes and provided quantitative values that can be used as input for modelling and lifetime estimation of Li-ion batteries. We employed micromechanical testing techniques, including micropillar compression, microcantilever bending, and nanoindentation, to measure the mechanical properties of the PVdF binder phase in the active layer. We discovered that nanoindentation tends to overestimate the modulus due to uncertainty associated with the test volume and initial large compression strains, while the micropillar compression technique provides more accurate modulus data with a narrower spread. Additionally, the yield stress of the binder phase can be evaluated using micropillar compression. Our obtained modulus values were in the range of 2.5–4.4 GPa, and the yield stress was in the range of 162–270 MPa. By microcantilever bending tests, we determined that the binder–particle interface often fails before the binder itself, suggesting that the interface significantly influences the failure mechanics. Overall, our results indicate that the microcantilever bending tests provide moduli estimates that agree with those obtained from micropillar compression tests. We also qualitatively examined the binder-particle and binder-current collector interfaces, further emphasising the significance of our methodology and the obtained quantitative values.