Researchers solve the mystery of nanowire breakage
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 - 08:03
in Physics & Chemistry
Most materials will break when a force is applied to an imperfection in their structure—such as a notch or dislocation. The behavior of these imperfections, and the resulting breakage, differ markedly between small structures, such as nanowires, and larger, bulk materials. However, scientists lacked complete understanding of the precise mechanics of nanowire breakages, owing in part to inconsistent behavior in experiments. These inconsistencies are now resolved thanks to numerical simulations by Zhaoxuan Wu and his co-workers at the A*STAR Institute for High Performance Computing, Singapore, and collaborators in the US.