Scientific Events

Due to its high diffusivity hydrogen atoms alloy with metals even at room temperature. At this temperature, the materials microstructure remains rather stable. When the system size is reduced to the nano-scale, microstructural defects as well as mechanical stress significantly affect the thermodynamics and kinetics properties of the system.[1-6] Effects will be demonstrated on Niobium-H and Palladium-H thin films.Hydrogen absorption in metal systems commonly leads to lattice expansion. The lateral expansion is hindered when the metal adheres to a rigid substrate, as for thin films. Consequently, high mechanical stresses arise upon hydrogen uptake. In theory, these stresses can reach about -10 GPa for 1 H/M. Usually, metals cannot yield such high stresses and deform plastically. Thereby, maximum compressive mechanical stress of -2 to -3 GPa is commonly measured for 100 nm Nb thin films adhered to Sapphire substrates. It will be shown that phase transformations change in the coherency state upon film thickness reduction. The coherency state affects the nucleation and growth behaviour of the hydride phase as well as the kinetics of the phase transformation.[1] It will be further demonstrated that plastic deformation can be hindered and even suppressed upon film thickness reduction. In this case the system behaves purely elastic and ultra-high stress of about -10 GPa can be experimentally reached.[2] These high mechanical stresses result in changes of the materials thermodynamics. In the case of Nb-H thin films of less than 8 nm thickness, the common phase transformation from the α-phase solid solution to the hydride phase is completely suppressed, at 300 K.[3,4,5] The experimental results go in line with the σDOS model that includes microstructural and mechanical stress effects on the chemical potential [6]. [1] V. Burlaka, K. Nörthemann, A. Pundt, „Nb-H Thin Films: On Phase Transformation Kinetics“, Def. Diff. Forum 371 (2017) 160. [2] M. Hamm, V. Burlaka, S. Wagner, A. Pundt, “Achieving reversibility of ultra-high mechanical stress by hydrogen loading of thin films”, Appl. Phys. Letters 106 (2015) 243108. [3] S. Wagner, A. Pundt, “Quasi-thermodynamic model on hydride formation in palladium-hydrogen thin films: Impact of elastic and microstructural constraints “, Int. J. Hydrog. Energy 41 (2016) 2727. [4] V. Burlaka, S. Wagner, M. Hamm, A. Pundt, “Suppression of phase transformation in Nb-H thin films below switchover-thickness”, Nano Letters 16 (2016) 6207. [5] S. Wagner, P. Klose, V. Burlaka, K: Nörthemann, M. Hamm, A. Pundt, Structural Phase Transitions in Niobium Hydrogen Thin Films: Mechanical Stress, Phase Equilibria and Critical Temperatures, Chem. Phys. Chem. 20 (2019) 1890–1904. [6] S. Wagner, A. Pundt, Hydrogen as a probe for defects in materials: Isotherms and related microstructures of palladium-hydrogen thin films, AIMS Materials Science 7 (2020), 399–419. [more]

In order to clarify the deformation and fracture mechanism in oxides such as Al2O3 and STO, TEM in situ nanoindentation experiments were conducted for their single crystals and bicrystals. We successfully observed the dynamic behavior of twin formation, twin-GB interaction, pile-up dislocation, jog and kink formation and jog drag dynamics and so on. The mechanism of each dynamic behavior will be discussed in detail in this presentation. GB migration plays an important role in considering the high temperature mechanical properties. Recently, we have found that GB migration behavior in Al2O3 can be precisely controlled by the aid of the high-energy electron beam irradiation. This technique was applied to directly visualize the atomistic GB migration. It was revealed that the GB migration is processed by a cooperative shuffling of atoms in GB ledges along specific routes. References [1] S. Kondo, T. Mitsuma, N. Shibata, Y. Ikuhara, Sci. Adv., 2[11], e1501926(2016). [2] S. Kondo, A. Ishihara, E. Tochigi, N. Shibata, and Y. Ikuhara, Nat. Commun., 10, 2112 (2019). [3] J.Wei, B.Feng, R.Ishikawa, T.Yokoi, K.Matsunaga, N.Shibata and Y.Ikuhara, Nat. Mater.,20 (7), 951 [4] J.Wei, B.Feng, E.Tochigi, N.Shibata and Y.Ikuhara, Nat. Commun., 13(1), 1455, (2022) [more]

Polycrystalline Ni-based superalloys are vital materials for disks in the hot section of aerospace and land-based turbine engines due to their exceptional microstructural stability and strength at high temperatures. In order to increase operating temperatures and hold times in these engines, hence increasing engine efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions, creep properties of these alloys becomes increasingly important. Microtwinning and stacking fault shearing through the strengthening g’ precipitates are important operative mechanisms in the critical 600-800°C temperature range. Atomic-scale chemical and structural analyses indicate that local phase transformations (LPT) occur commonly during creep of superalloys. Furthermore, the important deformation modes can be modulated by LPT formation, enabling a new path for improving high temperature properties. [more]

The persistent demand for green, strong and ductile advanced high strength steels, with a reduced climate footprint, calls for novel and improved multi-phase microstructures. The development of these new steels requires an in-depth understanding of the governing plasticity mechanisms at the micron scale. In order to address this challenge, novel numerical-experimental methods are called for that account for the discreteness, statistics and the intrinsic role of interfaces. This lecture sheds light on recent and innovative developments unravelling metal plasticity at the micron scale. Multi-phase through-thickness samples allow for a full characterization of the underlying microstructure. Using computational crystallographic insights, a slip system based local identification method has been developed, which provides full-field crystallographic slip system activity maps. The resulting deformation maps are directly used to assess the model predictions. Heterogeneous spatial variations are introduced by sampling the slip system properties of individual atomic slip planes from a probability density function. This allows to recover naturally localized slip patterns with a high resolution. It is demonstrated that this discrete slip plane model adequately replicates the diversity of active slip systems in the corresponding experiment, which cannot be achieved with standard crystal plasticity models. Recent experimental observations on dual-phase steels demonstrate substructure boundary sliding parallel to the habit plane in lath martensite, for which a habit-plane slip enriched laminate model is developed. This model adequately captures the role of the substructure boundary sliding on the deformation of the martensite aggregate. [more]

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Transition metal oxide superlattices have been widely investigated during recent years as they are one of the largest material groups where physical and chemical properties such as ferroelectricity, magnetism, ionic and electronic conductivity are closely coupled to structural parameters. Cation sub¬sti¬tution in complex oxides is an effective way to develop the functionalities through carrier doping, band engineering, or application of chemical pressure. For example, the coupling between charge and spin degrees of freedom across the interfaces and the local charge carrier concentration profiles have profound influences on the occurrence of superconductivity in low dimensional systems. Super-conductivity arises when a parent insulator compound is doped beyond some critical con-centration. Furthermore, the magnetic behaviour and conductivity of complex oxide superlattices can be tuned by controlling the layer thickness and by selecting appropriate intervening layer materials. Various methods for growing controlled superlattice structures exist, a favourite has been pulsed laser deposition (PLD), but molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is now also popular because of the controlled deposition rate and the flexibility allowed by the use of individual element sources. In theory, this allows composition control to the level of individual atomic layers. The PLD process requires higher temperatures and pressures than MBE. It also involves significantly higher energies for the impinging particles, which has potential implications for the interface roughness. In this presentation, I will discuss mapping of the local structure and interfacial chemistry of various complex oxide hetero-interfaces through advanced scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) in combination with energy-dispersive x-ray (EDX) analysis and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS).1 EELS allows for local probing of chemical composition and bonding, as well as electronic and magnetic structure, making the combination of STEM and EELS ideal for discovery of structure-property correlations at the atomic scale.2,3 References 1 F. Baiutti et al., Nature Comm. (2015), DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9586, in press. A.V. Boris et al., Science 332 (2011) 937-940. E. Detemple et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 99 (2011) 211903. E. Detemple et al., J. Appl. Phys. 112 (2012) 013509. A. Frano et al., Adv. Mater. 26 (2014) 258-262. F. Wrobel et al., submitted (2015). K. Song et al., APL Materials 2 (2014) 032104. D. Zhou et al., APL Materials 2 (2014) 127301. D. Zhou et al., Adv. Mater. Interfaces 2 (2015) 1500377. D. Zhou et al., Ultra¬micro¬sco¬py 160 (2016) 110–117. 2 PAvA gratefully acknowledges the intense collaboration with the following people without their contributions this work wouldn’t have been possible: F. Baiutti, E. Benckiser, C. Bernhard, A.V. Boris, M. Castro-Colin, G. Cristiani, E. Detemple, K. Du, A. Frano, E. Gilardi, G. Gregori, H.-U. Habermeier, V. Hinkov, B. Keimer, M. Kelsch, F.F. Krause, G. Logvenov, Y. Lu, J. Maier, V.K. Malik, A.F. Mark, Y. Matiks, M. Morenzoni, K. Müller-Caspary, E. Okunishi, P. Popovich, T. Prokscha, Q.M. Ramasse, M. Reehuis, A. Rosenauer, Z. Salman, H. Schmid, W. Sigle, K. Song, V. Srot, A. Suter, Y. Wang, P. Wochner, F. Wrobel, M. Wu, D. Zhou. 3 The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Program [FP/2007/2013] under grant agreement no 312483 (ESTEEM2). [more]