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Deformation of Small Volumes of Material Studied Using Strained-Layer Superlattice Structures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
Abstract
Mechanical studies of semiconductor superlattices have shown that the onset of plastic deformation under an inhomogeneous stress is a process that takes place simultaneously across a finite volume of the order of a micron across. The ability to incorporate known internal stresses, and to vary the stress and thickness of individual layers in a semiconductor superlattice, is a very powerful tool, opening up new possibilities for investigations that cannot be achieved by varying external stresses on a specimen that is sensibly homogeneous. In this way, from the initial yield stress of single-crystal strained-layer superlattices under indentation, we demonstrated a new criterion, of which the key feature is that it is to be averaged over a finite volume. Here we show that designing samples with individual layers in bands to form low yield-stress material within the structure can give information about the size and position of the initial yield volume.
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- Copyright © Materials Research Society 2002
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