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Importance of dislocation pile-ups on the mechanical properties and the Bauschinger effect in microcantilevers

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Abstract

Copper microcantilevers were produced by focused ion beam milling and tested in situ using a scanning electron microscope. To provide different interfaces for piling up dislocations, cantilevers were fabricated to be single crystalline, bicrystalline, or single crystalline with a slit in the region of the neutral axis. The aim of the experiment was to study the influence of dislocation pile-ups on (i) strength and (ii) Bauschinger effects in micrometer-sized, focused ion beam milled bending cantilevers. The samples were loaded monotonically for several times under displacement control. Even though the cantilevers exhibited the same nominal strain gradient the strength varied by 34% within the three cantilever geometries. The Bauschinger effect can be promoted and prohibited by the insertion of different interfaces.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Prof. Z. F. Zhang from the Shenyang National Laboratory (China) for providing one macroscopic bicrystal, Prof. C. Motz from Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken (Germany) for valuable discussion, and Dr. S. Brinckmann from the MPIE for additional FEM analysis justifying the assumed stress distribution in the cantilever. Financial support by the FWF Austrian Science Fund through project number P24429-N20 is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department Materialphysik, Montanuniversität Leoben, Leoben, 8700, Austria

    M. W. Kapp, C. Kirchlechner & G. Dehm

  2. Erich Schmid Institute of Material Science, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Leoben, 8700, Austria

    M. W. Kapp, R. Pippan & G. Dehm

  3. Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung, Düsseldorf, 40237, Germany

    C. Kirchlechner & G. Dehm

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  1. M. W. Kapp
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  2. C. Kirchlechner
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  3. R. Pippan
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  4. G. Dehm
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Correspondence to C. Kirchlechner.

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Kapp, M.W., Kirchlechner, C., Pippan, R. et al. Importance of dislocation pile-ups on the mechanical properties and the Bauschinger effect in microcantilevers. Journal of Materials Research 30, 791–797 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.49

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2015.49

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