Orientation Dependent Mechanical Responses and Plastic Deformation Mechanisms of ZnSe Nano Films under Nanoindentation

Although ZnSe has been widely studied due to its attractive electronic and optoelectronic properties, limited data on its plastic deformations are available. Through molecular dynamics simulations, we have investigated the indentations on the (001), (110), and (111) planes of ZnSe nano films. Our results indicate that the elastic modulus, incipient plasticity, elastic recovery ratio, and the structural evolutions during the indenting process of ZnSe nano films show obvious anisotropy. To analyze the correlation of structural evolution and mechanical responses, the atomic displacement vectors, atomic arrangements, and the dislocations of the indented samples are analyzed. Our simulations revealed that the plastic deformations of the indented ZnSe nano films are dominated by the nucleation and propagation of 1/2<110> type dislocations, and the symmetrically distributed prismatic loops emitted during the indenting process are closely related with the mechanical properties. By studying the evolutions of microstructures, the formation process of the dislocations, as well as the formation mechanisms of the emitted prismatic loops under the indented crystalline planes are discussed. The results presented in this work not only provide an answer for the questions about indentation responses of ZnSe nano films, but also offer insight into its plastic deformation mechanisms.

Nanoindentation behavior of high entropy alloys with transformation-induced plasticity

Nanoindentation of three metastable dual-phase high entropy alloys (HEAs) was performed to obtain their inherent elastoplastic deformation responses. Excellent combination of hardness and elastic modulus in as-cast condition confirmed that, their inherently higher strength compared to other HEAs reported in literature, can be attributed to alloy chemistry induced phase stability. Further, hardness of 8.28 GPa combined with modulus of 221.8 GPa was obtained in Fe-Mn-Co-Cr-Si-Cu HEA by annealing the as-cast material, which is the best hardness-modulus combination obtained to date in HEAs from nanoindentation. On the other hand, although Fe-Mn-Co-Cr-Si HEA showed lower hardness and modulus than Fe-Mn-Co-Cr-Si-Al and Fe-Mn-Co-Cr-Si-Cu HEAs, the former alloy exhibited the highest strain rate sensitivity, as determined from tests performed at five different strain rates. The three alloys also had subtle differences in incipient plasticity and elastoplastic behavior, while retaining similar levels of hardness; and nanoindentation response showed microstructural dependence in friction stir processed, annealed and tensile-deformed specimens. Thus, the study highlighted that while higher strength was achieved by designing a class of HEAs with similar composition, any of the individual alloys can be tuned to obtain enhanced properties.

Comment on "Incipient plasticity of diamond during nanoindentation" by C. Xu, C. Liu and H. Wang, RSC Advances, 2017, , 36093

A recent molecular dynamics simulation study on nanoindentation of diamond carried out by Xu et al. 1 has reported observation of the presence of a controversial hexagonal lonsdaleite phase of carbon in the indentation area. In this comment, we question the reported observation and attribute this anomaly to shortcomings of the long range bond order potential (LCBOP) employed in the nanoindentation study.