Nanoscale-twinning-induced strengthening in austenitic stainless steel thin films Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Magnetron-sputter-deposited austenitic 330 stainless steel (330 SS) films, several microns thick, were found to have a hardness 6.5 GPa, about an order of magnitude higher than bulk 330 SS. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy revealed that sputtered 330 SS coatings are heavily twinned on {111} with nanometer scale twin spacing. Molecular dynamics simulations show that, in the nanometer regime where plasticity is controlled by the motion of single rather than pile-ups of dislocations, twin boundaries are very strong obstacles to slip. These observations provide a new perspective to producing ultrahigh strength monolithic metals by utilizing growth twins with nanometer-scale spacing.

published proceedings

  • Applied Physics Letters

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Zhang, X., Misra, A., Wang, H., Nastasi, M., Embury, J. D., Mitchell, T. E., Hoagland, R. G., & Hirth, J. P.

citation count

  • 213

publication date

  • February 2004