Low-temperature in situ large strain plasticity of ceramic SiC nanowires and its atomic-scale mechanism

Large strain plasticity is phenomenologically defined as the ability of a material to exhibit an exceptionally large deformation rate during mechanical deformation. It is a property that is well established for metals and alloys but is rarely observed for ceramic materials especially at low temperature ( approximately 300 K). With the reduction in dimensionality, however, unusual mechanical properties are shown by ceramic nanomaterials. In this Letter, we demonstrated unusually large strain plasticity of ceramic SiC nanowires (NWs) at temperatures close to room temperature that was directly observed in situ by a novel high-resolution transmission electron microscopy technique. The continuous plasticity of the SiC NWs is accompanied by a process of increased dislocation density at an early stage, followed by an obvious lattice distortion, and finally reaches an entire structure amorphization at the most strained region of the NW. These unusual phenomena for the SiC NWs are fundamentally important for understanding the nanoscale fracture and strain-induced band structure variation for high-temperature semiconductors. Our result may also provide useful information for further studying of nanoscale elastic-plastic and brittle-ductile transitions of ceramic materials with superplasticity.