Understanding the rheology of nanocontacts

Ali Khosravi, Antoine Lainé, Andrea Vanossi, Jin Wang, Alessandro Siria and Erio Tosatti ()
Additional contact information
Ali Khosravi: International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)
Antoine Lainé: ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université Universitté Paris-Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, UMR CNRS 8550
Andrea Vanossi: International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)
Jin Wang: International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)
Alessandro Siria: ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université Universitté Paris-Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, UMR CNRS 8550
Erio Tosatti: International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA)

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Mechanical stiffness, as opposed to softness, is a fundamental property of solids. Its persistence or rheological evolution in vibrating solid-solid nanocontacts is important in physics, materials science and technology. A puzzling apparent liquefaction under oscillatory strain, totally unexpected at room temperature, was suggested by recent experiments on solid gold nano-junctions. Here we show theoretically that realistically simulated nanocontacts actually remain crystalline even under large oscillatory strains. Tensile and compressive slips, respectively of “necking” and “bellying” types, do take place, but recover reversibly even during fast oscillatory cycles. We also show that, counterintuitively, the residual stress remains tensile after both slips, driving the averaged stiffness from positive to negative, thus superficially mimicking a liquid’s. Unlike a liquid, however, rheological softening occurs by stick-slip, predicting largely frequency independent stiffness with violent noise in stress and conductance, properties compatible with experiments. The baffling large amplitude rheology of gold nanocontacts and its consequences should apply, with different parameters, to many other metals.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30096-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30096-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30096-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().