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Abstract
Size effects in plasticity are mostly studied in metallic systems, but they are rarely investigated in ionic crystals. In this study, single-crystalline KCl and LiF pillars were fabricated by focused ion beam technique and compressed using a flat punch tip in a nanoindenter. The materials were investigated with regards to crystal orientation, test temperature, pre-straining and doping. The results show: (1) [1 1 1] LiF pillars do exhibit size effect with an exponent of −0.38, in contrary to no size effect in [1 1 1] LiF reported in literature; (2) [0 0 1] LiF, and [0 0 1] and [1 1 1] KCl have similar size-effect exponents of −0.68, −0.71 and −0.65, respectively; (3) the size effect of [1 1 1] LiF pillars is more sensitive to the temperature change than that of [0 0 1] LiF pillars; (4) pre-straining of [1 1 1] LiF pillars results in a reduced size effect; (5) the 0.05 mol% CaCl2 doping in [0 0 1] KCl slightly increases strength levels and does not change the size effect much. The magnitude of the size effects in ionic crystals can be attributed to the bulk stress level, but not the slip systems. In addition, a correlation between critical temperatures and size-effect slopes is illustrated, and the additivity of strengthening mechanisms is critically discussed.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank P. Gasser (ScopeM, ETH Zurich) for their help in FIB milling, H. Ma (LNM, ETH Zurich) for his help in SEM, Dr W.W. Gerberich (University of Minnesota) for his helpful discussion; C. Müller (LNM ETH Zurich) for proof reading the manuscript.