Effect of Component Proportion on Mechanical Behaviors of Laminated Nanotwinned Cu
WAN Tao1,2, CHENG Zhao1, LU Lei1()
1Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China 2School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Shenyang 110016, China
Cite this article:
WAN Tao, CHENG Zhao, LU Lei. Effect of Component Proportion on Mechanical Behaviors of Laminated Nanotwinned Cu. Acta Metall Sin, 2023, 59(4): 567-576.
Laminated metals have the potential for achieving better mechanical properties, such as higher strength, ductility, and work hardening ability. The mechanism that leads to these advances stems from the inhomogeneous plastic deformations between soft and hard components where geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs) are produced while the two adjacent components are mutually constrained. Many structural factors have already been extensively investigated during the optimization of the laminated structure, such as the effect of layer thickness and the strength differential between components on the overall resulting properties. However, the effect of component composition percentage, an important factor for laminated structures, on the mechanical properties and its underlying mechanism remains elusive. To unravel the effect of component composition percentage on the mechanical properties, we used stable nanotwinned structures as components to build laminated nanotwinned (LNT) Cu materials. Three LNT Cu samples with hard components on the surface layers and soft components in the core layer were designed and prepared by direct-current electrodeposition. The soft component percentages were set as 10%, 50%, and 90%. The mechanical behaviors of LNT Cu were explored by uniaxial tensile tests at room temperature. Yield strengths for all three LNT Cu were higher than that estimated by the rule of mixture, indicating an extra strengthening effect from the LNT structure. The LNT Cu containing 50% soft component (LNT-50%) demonstrated the greatest extra strengthening. Interestingly, full-field strain measurements and microstructure characterizations further indicated that the strain localization of LNT-50% was well suppressed and the lateral strain difference between the soft and hard components was obviously reduced. This indicated that the strong mutual constraint between the two components contributed to the greatest extra strengthening.
Fund: National Natural Science Foundation of China(51931010);National Natural Science Foundation of China(92163202);National Natural Science Foundation of China(52001312);Key Research Program of Frontier Science and International Partnership Program, Chinese Academy of Sciences(GJHZ2029);China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(BX20190336);China Postdoctoral Science Foundation(2019M661150);Innovation Fund of Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences(2021-PY02)
Corresponding Authors:
LU Lei, professor, Tel: (024)23971939, E-mail: llu@imr.ac.cn
Fig.1 SEM and TEM images of HNT- (a1, a2) and HNT- (b1, b2), the distributions of grain size (d) (c) and twin thickness (λ) (d) of HNT- and HNT-; and schematics (e1-g1), SEM images (e2-g2), and hardness distributions (e3-g3) of LNT-10% (e1-e3), LNT-50% (f1-f3), and LNT-90% (g1-g3) (GD—growth direction, HNT—homogeneous nanotwinned, LNT—laminated nanotwinned)
Fig.2 Engineering stress-strain curves (a) and work hardening rate (Θ) vs true strain curves (b) of LNT Cu and HNT Cu (The endings of elastic-plastic transition are indicated by the intersections of work hardening curves with the dash line at Θ = E / 100 in the inset of Fig.2b, where E is Young's modulus of Cu (120 GPa))
Sample
σy / MPa
σuts / MPa
δu / %
/ %
LNT-10%
425 ± 12
465 ± 12
5.7 ± 0.7
2.9 ± 2.9
LNT-50%
372 ± 13
419 ± 2
9.9 ± 0.5
13.4 ± 4
LNT-90%
262 ± 9
328 ± 3
17.0 ± 0.9
8.3 ± 3.7
HNT-
434 ± 9
501 ± 14
1.6 ± 0.1
-
HNT-
221 ± 13
281 ± 6
21.7 ± 1.6
Table 1 Tensile properties of LNT Cu and HNT Cu samples at room temperature
Fig.3 Illustration of tensile specimen and spackle pattern on gauge area (a), strain distributions along x axial (εx ) on the surfaces of LNT-10% (b1-b3),LNT-50% (c1-c3), and LNT-90% (d1-d3) at different applied tensile strains (εapp), εx distribution profiles of three LNT Cu samples at εapp = 5% (e) (measured along the white transverse lines in Figs.3b3-d3), and Δεx of three LNT Cu samples at different εapp (f) (Δεx is the increased value between the maximal εx and εapp, as illustrated in Fig.3e)
Fig.4 Illustration of tensile specimen and the observed area (a), CLSM images (b1-d1, b2-d2) and corresponding average height profile (b3-d3) and average relative lateral strain (Δεy) (b4-d4) of LNT-10% (b1-b4), LNT-50% (c1-c4), and LNT-90% (d1-d4) deformed at εapp = 0 and 6%, respectively (The area closed by white dashed lines in Fig.4b2 indicates the strain localization zone. |Δε| is maximal lateral strain difference between component and , ηy is lateral strain gradient)
Fig.5 Microstructures of hard component (a1-c1) and soft component (a2-c2) of LNT-10% (a1, a2), LNT-50% (b1, b2), and LNT-90% (c1, c2) after tensile fracture (The areas circled by dashed lines in Figs.5a1 and a2 indicate the shear bands after deformation and the arrow in Figs.5a2 indicates detwinning. The true stain is estimated from area reduction after tensile deformation εT ≈ 35%)
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