Nature Communications (Oct 2017)

Harnessing mechanical instabilities at the nanoscale to achieve ultra-low stiffness metals

  • Samuel Temple Reeve,
  • Alexis Belessiotis-Richards,
  • Alejandro Strachan

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01260-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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The rule of mixtures usually causes composite properties to fall between the maximum and minimum of the parent phases. Here, the authors use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to break that rule by stabilizing a negative stiffness state in fully dense nickel-aluminum nanowires to achieve ultra-low stiffness.