Higher Toughness of Metal-nanoparticle-implanted Sodalime Silicate Glass with Increased Ductility

In this report, we propose a novel framework for toughening brittle oxide glass originated from enhanced ductility by implanting a secondary material comprising different mechanical properties. To do so, copper-metal nanoparticles are implanted into the subsurface layer of commercial soda-lime silica glass by using the electrofloat method. The crack initiation load of the implanted glass is found to be comparable to the glass chemically strengthened in ordinary tempering conditions. By observing crack propagation and stress distribution from cross-section, it is found that the crack propagation stops within the metal nanoparticle implanted layer, due to the stress dissipation or relaxation. The copper-implanted glass shows improved toughness with decreased hardness. The toughening mechanism of the composite glass is theoretically studied using molecular dynamics calculations on an amorphous silica model with copper nanoparticles embedded, and Peridynamics fracture simulations for indentation on a glass sheet model whose surface was implicitly modeled as the copper-implanted oxide glass. The experimentally observed phenomena of intrinsic toughening were well explained by the series of the conducted simulations.