nanoREV.

Nanomaterials Perform Better than Expected Under Stress

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland-College Park have discovered that materials such as silica that are quite brittle in bulk form behave as ductile as gold at the nanoscale. Their results may affect the design of future nanomachines.

NIST scientists Pradeep Namboodiri and Doo-In Kim and colleagues first demonstrated the latest incongruity between the macro- and microworlds this past fall with direct experimental evidence for nanoscale ductility. In a new paper** presented at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society, NIST researchers Takumi Hawa and Michael Zachariah and guest researcher Brian Henz shared the insights they gained into the phenomenon through their computer simulations of nanoparticle aggregates, according to the NIST press release issued today.

At the macroscale, the point at which a material will fail or break depends on its ability to maintain its shape when stressed. The atoms of ductile substances are able to shuffle around and remain cohesive for much longer than their brittle cousins, which contain faint structural flaws that act as failure points under stress.