Abstract
Highly nanotwinned (NT) metals have advantages such as high strength, good ductility, favorable corrosion resistance, and thermal stability. It has been demonstrated that the introduction of high density NT microstructures can enhance the tribological properties of metals. However, the influence of the microstructure and the composition of NT alloys on the tribological behavior are not clear. In this work, the sliding wear behavior of fully NT materials, specifically Cu-Al and Cu-Ni alloys, are studied by a nanoscratch technique using a nanoindenter. The effects of microstructure and chemical composition on the wear properties are also studied. The results show that the chemical composition has an obvious influence on the wear resistance and microstructural deformation. For NT Cu-Al alloys, the hardness and sliding wear resistance improve with increased Al content from Cu-2wt.%Al to Cu-6wt.%Al. NT Cu-10wt.%Ni alloy shows even better wear resistance than Cu-6wt.%Al. The microstructural analysis shows that NT Cu alloys with higher wear resistance correspond to a smaller deformation-affected zone. The improvement of sliding wear properties of Cu-Al alloys with higher Al content may be ascribed to their decreased stacking fault energy. NT Cu-Ni alloy shows better wear resistance than Cu-Al alloy, this may be related to the formation of intermetallic compounds in Cu-Al system. This study broadens the knowledge about tribological properties of NT materials and provides a potential method to optimize their sliding wear resistance by altering the chemical composition of NT Cu alloys.
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Acknowledgments
This work was performed under the auspices of the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. NSF-DMR- 0955338 and NSF-OISE-1460006). The authors would like to thank Leonardo Velasco for preparing the sputtered samples, Nathan Heckman for his discussions, and are grateful to the Center for Electron Microscope and Microanalysis (CEMMA) for the characterization facilities.
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Jianfeng YAN. He received his Ph.D. degree in materials science from Tsinghua University, China in 2013. After then he has worked as post-doctoral research associate at Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California, USA. In 2017, he joined Tsinghua University as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. His research interests include nanocrystalline materials processing.
Andrew LINDO. He received his B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from University of Southern California in 2017, where he was an undergraduate assistant in the Hodge materials nanotechnology research group for 4 years. His research interests include nanoindentation and wear on bulk materials and multilayered films.
Ruth SCHWAIGER. She is head of the nanomechanics research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). She conducted her doctoral research at the Max- Planck-Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, Germany, and obtained her doctoral degree in materials science from the University of Stuttgart in 2002. After her postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she joined the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany in 2004 and then moved to a management consulting firm in 2007. She joined KIT in 2010. Her research interests range from deformation mechanisms in metals and the mechanics of small-scale materials and structures to biomechanics and mechanical metamaterials. Her research aims to develop a mechanism-based understanding of deformation and failure of materials, and to determine design principles impacting improved strength and damage tolerance.
Andrea M. HODGE. She is the Arthur B. Freeman professor of chemical engineering and materials science, and of aerospace and mechanical engineering. She received her Ph.D. degree in materials science from Northwestern University, in 2002, and became a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that same year. In 2007, she joined USC as an assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering. Her research interests range from processing of nanocrystalline and nanoporous materials to nanomechanics of multilayers and thin films.
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Yan, J., Lindo, A., Schwaiger, R. et al. Sliding wear behavior of fully nanotwinned Cu alloys. Friction 7, 260–267 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-018-0220-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40544-018-0220-z