Abstract

Nanoindentation is widely used to investigate mechanical properties of materials at small scales. In this work, 16 nm accumulative roll bonding (ARB) Cu/Nb nanolaminate is used as a test material due to its crystallographic anisotropy owing to the presence of contrasting interfaces along rolling (RD) and transverse direction (TD). Nanoindentation was performed and then Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) data was collected to measure the pile-up along RD and TD in the Cu/Nb nanolaminate. 16 nm Cu/Nb ARB nanolaminate along RD was found to show higher surface pile-up than TD which is attributed to the variation in the Cu/Nb interface plasticity along RD and TD. Further, 2D axisymmetric FEA analysis was performed to compare and validate experimental indentation data. The simulated data was found to compare well with the experimentally generated load-displacement curves whereas qualitative agreement was obtained with the pileup data. The authors believe that the characterization of surface pile-up is of significant importance for enabling the Cu/Nb ARB nanolayers as the novel stretchable metallic conductor technology (for emerging applications such as electronic skins, soft robotics, etc.) that might be useful for the global green and sustainability efforts (soft robots for collecting plastic trashes in ocean)

Abstract

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