著者
Sakai S. Tanimoto H. Kita E. Mizubayashi H.
出版者
American Physical Society
雑誌
Physical review B (ISSN:01631829)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.66, no.21, pp.214106, 2002-12
被引用文献数
16 17

Nanocrystalline (n) Au specimens with a density of 19.4±0.2 g/cm3 and a mean grain size of about 20 nm were prepared below 300 K by the gas deposition method, where two types of n-Au specimens were obtained as a function of a deposition rate, the type-H specimens above 800 nm/s and the type-L specimens below 800 nm/s. The anelastic and the plastic creep responses are similar qualitatively but different quantitatively between the type-H and type-L specimens. The anelastic strain ɛan,GB, associated with the grain boundary (GB) regions, increases linearly with (T-Tan1)(σap-σan1), when the temperature T is higher than a threshold temperature Tan1 of 200 K and the applied stress σap is higher than a threshold stress, σan1, of a few MPa. The ratio of ɛan,GB to the elastic strain is as large as 1.1 for the type-H specimens and 0.2 for the type-L specimens at 320 K for σap≫σan1. The activation energy for the GB anelastic process is 0.2 eV. We surmise that cooperative motions of many atoms in the GB regions are responsible for ɛan,GB, and both Tan1 and σan1 show a distribution depending on the number of atoms associated. The plastic creep rate ɛ′ vs σap data show a letter S-like curve. We classified the creep response into three categories, region I for the linear creep rate region for σap between σpc 1 and σpc2, region II for the transient creep rate region for σap between σpc2 and σpc3, and region III for the saturation creep rate region for σap between σpc3 and σy. The threshold stresses σpc1 and σpc2 and the yield stress σy are about 30, 150, and 360 MPa for the type-H specimens, and about 60, 300, and 500 MPa for the type-L specimens, respectively. σpc3 is slightly lower than σy. From scanning tunneling microscopy images, we surmise that the localized GB slip takes place in region I, and the mean separation between the localized GB slips decreases with increasing σap in region II and becomes comparable with the mean grain size in region III. The plastic creep in region III may be explained by the Ashby creep. The present view for the creep behavior explains the low-temperature creep behavior of fcc n metals.