Kinetics of Intrinsic Stress in Nanocrystalline Films

TL;DR

This paper investigates the slow relaxation of intrinsic stress in nanocrystalline films, revealing limitations of existing models and aiming to inform strategies for stabilizing high stress in nanostructures.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the slow stress relaxation kinetics in nanocrystalline materials, challenging current diffusive models and exploring stabilization methods.

Findings

Nanocrystalline films retain high intrinsic stress longer than conventional materials.

Current diffusive models do not fully explain the slow relaxation observed.

The study identifies key limitations in stress relaxation processes for nanostructures.

Abstract

Conventional polycrystalline materials acquire high levels of intrinsic mechanical stress (ranging from MPa to a few GPa) during preparation and use, but this stress decays quickly (~minutes) to small residual values (~kPa) under standard resting conditions. Nanocrystalline materials reach similar or even higher levels of intrinsic stress, but surprisingly retain a significant portion of this stress over much longer time scales (~hours). This behavior directly contradicts current theoretical models that predict stress relaxation through diffusive currents. Diffusive currents, which flow mainly on the surfaces of grains, are expected to produce faster relaxation kinetics when the stress to be released is higher. In this work, we study the kinetics of intrinsic stress relaxation in nanocrystalline films and identify the limitations of this process as a preliminary step towards designing a strategy for high-stress stabilization in nanostructured systems.