Plasticity of borosilicate glasses under uniaxial tension

KH Lee and YJ Yang and LF Ding and B Ziebarth and MJ Davis and JC Mauro, JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CERAMIC SOCIETY, 103, 4295-4303 (2020).

DOI: 10.1111/jace.17163

The mechanical response of multicomponent borosilicate glasses has drawn significant attention in the design of damage-resistant glasses. In this work, we investigate the plasticity of two borosilicate glasses, Borofloat(R)33 (Boro33) and N-BK7(R), by implementing a uniaxial tension test using molecular dynamics simulations. A bond-switching mechanism is found to be responsible for the plastic response of both glasses and is governed by the increasing rate of non-bridging oxygen (NBO) production during the uniaxial tension. We found that the amount of (BOSi4)-O-4 linkages in the glass governs the stress drop after yielding, due to its higher tendency to create NBOs compared to (SiOSi4)-O-4. Also, the initial existence of NBOs weakens the critical stress for breaking the B-4-O bond in (BOSi4)-O-4, which in turn lowers the yield strength of the glass. The local atomic constraints are analyzed in the two glasses, and high anti-correlation between the concentration of rigid constraints and plastic deformation is observed.

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