Atomic Simulations of Packing Structures, Local Stress and Mechanical Properties for One Silicon Lattice with Single Vacancy on Heating

The effect of vacancy defects on the structure and mechanical properties of semiconductor silicon materials is of great significance to the development of novel microelectronic materials and the processes of semiconductor sensors. In this paper, molecular dynamics is used to simulate the atomic packing structure, local stress evolution and mechanical properties of a perfect lattice and silicon crystal with a single vacancy defect on heating. In addition, their influences on the change in Young’s modulus are also analyzed. The atomic simulations show that in the lower temperature range, the existence of vacancy defects reduces the Young’s modulus of the silicon lattice. With the increase in temperature, the local stress distribution of the atoms in the lattice changes due to the migration of the vacancy. At high temperatures, the Young’s modulus of the silicon lattice changes in anisotropic patterns. For the lattice with the vacancy, when the temperature is higher than 1500 K, the number and degree of distortion in the lattice increase significantly, the obvious single vacancy and its adjacent atoms contracting inward structure disappears and the defects in the lattice present complex patterns. By applying uniaxial tensile force, it can be found that the temperature has a significant effect on the elasticity–plasticity behaviors of the Si lattice with the vacancy.

The complementary graphene growth and etching revealed by large-scale kinetic Monte Carlo simulation

To fully understand the kinetics of graphene growth, large-scale atomic simulations of graphene islands evolution up to macro sizes (i.e., graphene islands of a few micrometers or with billions of carbon atoms) during growth and etching is essential, but remains a great challenge. In this paper, we developed a low computational cost large-scale kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) algorithm, which includes all possible events of carbon attachments and detachments on various edge sites of graphene islands. Such a method allows us to simulate the evolution of graphene islands with sizes up to tens of micrometers during either growth or etching with a single CPU core. With this approach and the carefully fitted parameters, we have reproduced the experimentally observed evolution of graphene islands during both growth or etching on Pt(111) surface, and revealed more atomic details of graphene growth and etching. Based on the atomic simulations, we discovered a complementary relationship of graphene growth and etching—the route of graphene island shape evolution during growth is exactly the same as that of the etching of a hole in graphene and that of graphene island etching is exactly same as that of hole growth. The complementary relation brings us a basic principle to understand the growth and etching of graphene, and other 2D materials from atomic scale to macro size and the KMC algorithm is expected to be further developed into a standard simulation package for investigating the growth mechanism of 2D materials on various substrates.

Atomistic Simulation Study of Mechanical Deformation of Al-Mg-Si Alloys

Aluminum alloys have been attracting significant attention. Especially Al-Mg-Si alloys can exhibit an excellent balance between strength and ductility. Deformation mechanisms and microstructural evolution are still challenging issues. Accordingly, to describe how the type of phase influence mechanical behaviour of Al/Mg/Si alloys, in this paper atomic simulations are performed to investigate the uniaxial compressive behaviour of Al-Mg-Si ternary phases. The compression is at the same strain rate (3.1010 s−1); using Modified Embedded Atom Method (MEAM) potential to model the deformation behaviour. From these simulations, we get the total radial distribution function; the stress-strain responses to describe the elastic and plastic behaviors of GP-AlMg4Si6, U2-Al4Mg4Si4 and β-Al3Mg2Si6 phases. For a Detailed description of which phase influence hardness and ductility of these alloys; the mechanical properties are determined and presented. These stress-strain curves obtained show a rapid increase in stress up to a maximum followed by a gradual drop when the specimen fails by ductile fracture. From the results, it was found that GP-AlMg4Si6 & U2-Al4Mg4Si4 phases are brittle under uniaxial compressive loading while β-Al3Mg2Si6 phase is very ductile under the same compressive loading. The engineering stress-strain relationship suggests that β-Al3Mg2Si6 phase have high elasticity limit, ability to resist deformation and have the advantage of being highly malleable. Molecular dynamics software LAMMPS was used to simulate and build the Al-Mg-Si ternary system.

Influence of hydrogenation on the mechanical properties of Pd nanoparticles

Atomic simulations are conducted to investigate the influence of hydrogenation on the mechanical properties of Pd nanoparticles.

Methods to Evaluate the Twin Formation Energy: Comparative Studies of the Atomic Simulations and in-situ Tem Tensile Tests

Deformation twinning (DT), one of the major deformation modes in a crystalline material, has typically been analyzed using generalized planar fault energy (GPFE) curves. Despite the significance of these curves in understanding the twin nucleation and its effect on the mechanical properties of crystals, their validity has never been evaluated experimentally. In this comparative study based on the first-principles calculation, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation, and quantitative in-situ tensile testing of Al nanowires (NWs) inside a transmission electron microscopy (TEM) system, we present both a theoretical and an experimental approach that enable the measurement of a part of the twin formation energy of the perfect Al crystal. The proposed experimental method is also regarded as an indirect but quantitative means for validating the GPFE theory.