Chinese researchers have successfully harnessed ion technology to create highly efficient Mechanical metamaterials with extremely high energy absorption capabilities. The results were published in Nature Communications as lead editors.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their colleagues at Chongqing University.
Mechanical metamaterials refer to a class of composites with mechanical properties, which exhibit unique mechanical properties that traditional materials lack. Among them, active energy-collecting metamaterials can absorb energy very well, which requires the material itself to have both high strength and high deformation capacity, which, however , do not live together.
Nano-lattice is a new class of metallic metamaterials with characteristic dimensions at the nanoscale. Due to the effect of size, geometrical structure and the choice of material, the performance of this type of porous material is very different from that of bulk material. Considering its even better mechanical properties and light weight, the nano-array is expected to bring advancements in the field of high-performance materials in the future.
Beam-guided nano-arrays are a research area of nano-array metamaterials. However, it is very difficult to produce a metal nanoarray with a diameter of less than 100 nm, so its properties are still unclear. In this project, based at the Lanzhou Heavy Ion Research Facility (HIRFL), researchers developed a new type of mechanical quasi-body-centered cubic-beam (quasi-BCC) nano-array metamaterial and ion tracks technology.
The beam diameter of the quasi-BCC nanoarray can be as small as 34 nm, a record beam diameter of metal metamaterials. In addition, the researchers showed that the quasi-BCC beam nanoarrays of gold and copper have good energy absorption and compressive strength.
These experiments showed that the energy absorption capacity of the copper quasi-BCC beam nanoarray is superior to that of the previously reported nanoarray beam. The yield strength of the quasi-BCC beam nanoarray of gold and copper is greater than that of the corresponding bulk materials with less than half the density of the latter.
Also, the researchers revealed that the special mechanical properties are mainly due to the synergistic effect of the size effect, the quasi-BCC geometry and the good ductility of the metal.
This study sheds light on the functional properties of beam nanoarrays and applies ion beam technology as a new method for the analysis of beam nanoarrays with high energy absorption capabilities.
Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences