Plasticity driven by amorphous shear band: role of heterogeneity

NN Wang and XX Hu and Z Zhao and HB Luo and L Liu and Y Ding and Z Liu and RJ Chen and I Szlufarska and AR Yan, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MECHANICAL SCIENCES, 303, 110608 (2025).

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijmecsci.2025.110608

The occurrence of amorphous shear bands in crystalline materials usually leads to brittle fracture. However, in some materials it was found to have the opposite effect, acting as a driver of plasticity. Recent research has found that this kind of shear-band plasticity should follow certain necessary conditions such as small density change (<6 %) during amorphization and lower energy for shear-band formation than cleavage. This work demonstrates in an intermetallic that the shear-band plasticity can be greatly enhanced by introducing atomic-scale structural heterogeneity. The samples with such heterogeneity can be plastically deformed above a compressive engineering strain of about 5 %, while the samples without the heterogeneity do not show significant plasticity even though the strain reaches 10 %. Atomistic analysis reveals that the existence of soft and hard spots induces progressive formation and delocalization, rather than abrupt shear localization, of shear bands. This finding provides a potential solution to future application of such plasticity mechanism in developing new materials with high toughness.

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