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Why Smaller is Stronger

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BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 8, 2008 -- For 50 years scientists have known that as structures made of metal get smaller -- on the scale of millionths of a meter or less -- they get stronger. Many theories have been proposed to explain the phenomenon, but only recently have new imaging techniques made it possible to see and record what's actually happening in tiny structures under stress.

Andrew Minor of the Materials Sciences Div. at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with colleagues from Hysitron Inc. and the General Motors Research and Development Center, used the in situ microscope at the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM) to record what happens when pillars of nickel with diameters between 150 and 400 nanometers (billionths of a meter) are compressed under a flat punch made of diamond. The transmission electron microscope is equipped so that samples can be stressed, measured and videotaped while being observed under the electron beam.
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Andrew Minor with the in situ microscope at the National Center for Electron Microscopy. (Images courtesy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab)
"What controls the deformation of a metal object is the way that defects, called dislocations, move along planes in its crystal structure," Minor said. "The result of dislocation slip is plastic deformation. For example, bending a paper clip causes its trillions of dislocations per square centimeter to tangle up and multiply as they run into one another and slide along numerous slip planes."

In general, mechanical deformation tends to increase the number of dislocations in a material. But for small-scale structures, with a much greater proportion of surface area to volume, the process can be very different. The videotaped images from the electron microscope helped the researchers understand why nanoscale nickel pillars are so strong by allowing them to observe changes in the microstructure of the pillars during deformation -- including a never-before-seen process the researchers dubbed "mechanical annealing." (In bulk materials, annealing, a treatment that reduces the density of defects, is usually accomplished by heating.)

"The first thing we observed was that, before the test, the nanoscale pillars of nickel were full of dislocations. But as we compressed the pillar, all the dislocations were driven out of the material -- literally reducing the dislocation density by 15 orders of magnitude and producing a perfect crystal. We called this effect mechanical annealing," Minor said.

The pillars Minor and his colleagues tested were machined from pure nickel using a focused ion beam (FIB), a new technique for small-scale mechanical compression testing first described in 2004 by Michael Uchic of the US Air Force Research Laboratory and his colleagues. The FIB technique makes it possible to create much smaller structures than the tin "whiskers" a few millimeters in length first studied in the 1950s, which are made by growing crystals.

Some of the dislocations the researchers observed in the machined pillars were relatively shallow and caused by the ion beams themselves. Others extended through the crystal and were presumably pre-existing defects. Under compression, mechanical annealing caused both kinds of defect to vanish.

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Compression of a nickel pillar that has a diameter at the free end of about 150 nm. Before compression (left) the pillar has a high density of defects, visible as dark mottling. After compression all the defects have been driven out, a previously unobserved process known as "mechanical annealing."
"Essentially all the dislocations escape from the crystal at the surface, and you do not get storage of dislocations like you would in larger crystals," Minor said. "What results is a process called 'dislocation starvation,' recently proposed by William D. Nix of Stanford, among others, which has quickly became one of the leading theories of why smaller structures are stronger.

"The idea is that if dislocations escape the material before they can interact and multiply, there are not enough active dislocations to enable the imposed deformation. The structure can only deform after new dislocations are created," Minor said. 

This is precisely the process he and his colleagues observed with NCEM's in situ microscope, strong evidence that "dislocation starvation" is the correct explanation for the increased strength of small structures.

What happens if a defect-free nanoscale nickel pillar continues to be compressed? Something has to give, which happens when new sources of dislocation "nucleate" in the material. As the existing dislocations disappear in the pillar because of mechanical annealing, the nucleation of new dislocation sources happens at progressively higher stresses.

In the pillar structures, plastic deformation may take the form of sudden flattening, bulging, twisting, or shearing of the pillar, as bursts of new dislocations propagate through it. Or the hardened pillars, made stronger by mechanical annealing, may punch right down into the substrate -- even though pillar and substrate are the same continuous piece of metal. Both processes were captured in the in situ microscope's videotaped experiments.

The FIB machining used by the NCEM researchers produced nickel pillars that were slightly tapered, and the researchers noted that this geometry affected where and how plastic deformation occurred, generally being greater in the smaller-diameter, free end (top) of the pillar.

In larger pillars, those approaching 300 nm in diameter, mechanical annealing was not complete, and some dislocations remained visible even after compression. Yet even these pillars exhibited enhanced strength, and progressively higher stresses were needed to continue deformation -- underlining the point that it is the creation of mobile defects that determines strength in these small volumes.

"The beauty of the pillar-testing geometry is that we can straightforwardly define stress. Then we can correlate the measured stresses with discrete plastic events recorded in situ and more clearly interpret the quantitative data from our experiments," said Minor. "The debate over what determines the strength of a small structure has come down to almost a chicken-and-egg question -- is something strong because you need a high stress to move a dislocation that is already there? Or is it strong because you need a high stress to nucleate a new dislocation? In this case, it seems that source nucleation -- that is, the 'egg' -- is the determining factor."

This work was partially supported by a grant from the US Department of Energy to Hysitron, Inc., and also by a grant from the Department of Energy's Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences.

For more information, visit: www.lbl.gov

Published: January 2008
Glossary
dislocation
The region of distorted atom configuration formed between the displaced and normal areas in a crystal when part of the crystal is displaced tangentially.
electron
A charged elementary particle of an atom; the term is most commonly used in reference to the negatively charged particle called a negatron. Its mass at rest is me = 9.109558 x 10-31 kg, its charge is 1.6021917 x 10-19 C, and its spin quantum number is 1/2. Its positive counterpart is called a positron, and possesses the same characteristics, except for the reversal of the charge.
microscope
An instrument consisting essentially of a tube 160 mm long, with an objective lens at the distant end and an eyepiece at the near end. The objective forms a real aerial image of the object in the focal plane of the eyepiece where it is observed by the eye. The overall magnifying power is equal to the linear magnification of the objective multiplied by the magnifying power of the eyepiece. The eyepiece can be replaced by a film to photograph the primary image, or a positive or negative relay...
nano
An SI prefix meaning one billionth (10-9). Nano can also be used to indicate the study of atoms, molecules and other structures and particles on the nanometer scale. Nano-optics (also referred to as nanophotonics), for example, is the study of how light and light-matter interactions behave on the nanometer scale. See nanophotonics.
photonics
The technology of generating and harnessing light and other forms of radiant energy whose quantum unit is the photon. The science includes light emission, transmission, deflection, amplification and detection by optical components and instruments, lasers and other light sources, fiber optics, electro-optical instrumentation, related hardware and electronics, and sophisticated systems. The range of applications of photonics extends from energy generation to detection to communications and...
transmission electron microscope
A type of microscope that uses magnetic lenses to transmit a beam of electrons through an object; the electrons are then focused on a fluorescent screen to form an enlarged image.
Air Force Research Laboratorycrystalsdislocationdislocation starvationelectronFIBfocused ion beamHysitronin situ microscopeLawrence Berkeley National Laboratorymechanical annealingmicroscopeMicroscopyMinornanonanoscaleNational Center for Electron MicroscopyNCEMNews & Featuresnickelnucleationphotonicspillartransmission electron microscope

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