Elastic and plastic effects on heterogeneous nucleation and nanowire formation

TL;DR

This paper explores how elastic and plastic deformations influence heterogeneous nucleation and nanowire formation, combining analytical models with numerical simulations to understand phase diagrams and stability effects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive theoretical analysis of deformation effects on nucleation and nanowire stability, supported by phase diagrams and numerical simulations.

Findings

Confinement affects nucleation regimes depending on driving force and confinement degree.

Screw dislocations induce torsion and promote Rayleigh-Plateau instability.

Numerical simulations support analytical predictions of deformation effects.

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the effects of elastic and plastic deformations on heterogeneous nucleation and nanowire formation. In the first case, the influence of the confinement of the critical nucleus between two parallel misfitting substrates is investigated using scaling arguments. We present phase diagrams giving the nature of the nucleation regime as a function of the driving force and the degree of confinement. We complement this analytical study by amplitude equations simulations. In the second case, the influence of a screw dislocation inside a nanowire on the development of the morphological surface stability of the wire, related to the Rayleigh-Plateau instability, is examined. Here the screw dislocation provokes a torsion of the wire known as Eshelby twist. Numerical calculations using the finite element method and the amplitude equations are performed to support analytical investigations. It is shown that the screw dislocation promotes the Rayleigh-Plateau instability.