Related papers: Fracture of glassy materials as detected by real-t…
We have studied the low speed fracture regime for different glassy materials with variable but controlled length scales of heterogeneity in a carefully mastered surrounding atmosphere. By using optical and atomic force microscopy (AFM)…
We report in situ Atomic Force Microscopy experiments which reveal the presence of nanoscale damage cavities ahead of a stress-corrosion crack tip in glass. Their presence might explain the departure from linear elasticity observed in the…
We studied the low speed fracture regime (0.1mm/s - 1nm/s) in different glassy materials (soda-lime glass, glass-ceramics) with variable but controlled length scale of heterogeneity. The chosen mechanical system enabled us to work in pure…
We use large-scale simulations to investigate the dynamic fracture of silica and sodium-silicate glasses under uniaxial tension. The stress-strain curves demonstrate that silica glass is brittle whereas the glasses rich in Na show…
An original setup combining a very stable loading stage, an atomic force microscope and an environmental chamber, allows to obtain very stable sub-critical fracture propagation in oxide glasses under controlled environment, and subsequently…
Since crack propagation in oxide materials at low crack velocities is partly determined by chemical corrosion, proper knowledge of the crack tip chemistry is crucial for understanding fracture in these materials. Such knowledge can be…
We perform fracture experiments on nanoscale phase separated glasses and measure crack surface roughness by atomic force microscopy. The ability of tuning the phase domain size by thermal treatment allows us to test thoroughly the…
Understanding, predicting and eventually improving the resistance to fracture of silicate materials is of primary importance to design new glasses that would be tougher, while retaining their transparency. However, the atomic mechanism of…
Ultimately, brittle fracture involves breaking atomic bonds. However, we still lack a clear picture of what happens in the highly deformed region around a moving crack tip. Consequently, we still cannot link nano to atomic-scale phenomena…
We report here atomic force microscopy experiments designed to uncover the nature of failure mechanisms occuring within the process zone at the tip of a crack propagating into a silica glass specimen under stress corrosion. The crack…
We report nano-scale mechanical heterogeneity of a metallic glass characterized by dynamic atomic force microscopy. Apparent energy dissipation with the variation of ~12%, originating from non-uniform distribution of local viscoelasticity,…
The existence of nanoscale ductility during the fracture of silicate glasses remains controversial. Here, based on molecular dynamics simulations coupled with topological constraint theory, we show that nano-ductility arises from the…
Fractoluminescence experiments are performed on two kinds of silicate glasses. All the light spectra collected during dynamic fracture reveal a black body radiator behaviour, which is interpreted as a crack velocity-dependent temperature…
Stretchable conductors are of crucial relevance for emerging technologies such as wearable electronics, low-invasive bioelectronic implants or soft actuators for robotics. A critical issue for their development regards the understanding of…
Fracture is the ultimate source of failure of amorphous carbon (a-C) films, however it is challenging to measure fracture properties of a-C from nano-indentation tests and results of reported experiments are not consistent. Here, we use…
The strengths of glasses are intricately linked to their atomic-level heterogeneity. Atomistic simulations are frequently used to investigate the statistical physics of this relationship, compensating for the limited spatiotemporal…
Amorphous solids, confined on the nano-scale, exhibit a wealth of novel phenomena yet to be explored. In particular, the response of such solids to a mechanical load is not well understood and, as has been demonstrated experimentally, it…
Fracture growth in a material is strongly influenced by the presence of inhomogeneities, which deviate crack trajectories from rectilinearity and deeply affect failure. Increasing crack tortuosity is connected to enhancement of fracture…
The propagation of an interfacial crack front through a weak plane of a transparent Plexiglas block has been studied experimentally. A stable crack in mode I was generated by loading the system by an imposed displacement. The local…
The slow advance of a crack in sodo-silicate glasses was studied at nanometer scale by in situ and real time atomic force microscopy (AFM) in a well controlled atmosphere. An enhanced diffusion of sodium ions in the stress gradient field at…