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Title: Liquid-Like, Self-Healing Aluminum Oxide during Deformation at Room Temperature

Journal Article · · Nano Letters
ORCiD logo [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5]
  1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering
  2. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering; Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL (United States). Advanced Materials Processing and Analysis Center (AMPAC) and Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
  3. Xi’an Jiaotong Univ. (China); Southeast Univ., Nanjing (China). Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale (CAMP-Nano) and State Key Lab. for Mechanical Behavior of Materials
  4. Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN)
  5. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States). Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering

Effective protection from environmental degradation relies on the integrity of oxide as diffusion barriers. Ideally, the passivation layer can repair its own breaches quickly under deformation. While studies suggest that the native aluminum oxide may manifest such properties, it has yet to be experimentally proven because direct observations of the air-environmental deformation of aluminum oxide and its initial formation at room temperature are challenging. In this letter, we report in situ experiments to stretch pure aluminum nanotips under O2 gas environments in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). We discovered that aluminum oxide indeed deforms like liquid and can match the deformation of Al without any cracks/spallation at moderate strain rate. At higher strain rate, we exposed fresh metal surface, and visualized the self-healing process of aluminum oxide at atomic resolution. Unlike traditional thin-film growth or nanoglass consolidation processes, we observe seamless coalescence of new oxide islands without forming any glass–glass interface or surface grooves, indicating greatly accelerated glass kinetics at the surface compared to the bulk.

Research Organization:
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA (United States); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Xi’an Jiaotong Univ. (China); Southeast Univ., Nanjing (China)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0012704; DMR-1410636
OSTI ID:
1430854
Report Number(s):
BNL-203374-2018-JAAM
Journal Information:
Nano Letters, Vol. 18, Issue 4; ISSN 1530-6984
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 79 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Highly ductile amorphous oxide at room temperature and high strain rate conference March 2021
Rapid On-Chip Healing of Metal Thin Films journal November 2018
Greatly enhanced anticorrosion of Al–AlN x O y nanocermet films with self-passivated Al nanoparticles for enduring solar-thermal energy harvesting journal January 2019
Highly ductile amorphous oxide at room temperature and high strain rate journal November 2019
Enhanced performance of GaInP/GaAs/Ge solar cells under high concentration through Pd/Ge/Ti/Pd/Al grid metallization journal June 2019
The Aluminum-Ion Battery: A Sustainable and Seminal Concept? journal May 2019
Reactive boride infusion stabilizes Ni-rich cathodes for lithium-ion batteries journal March 2021
The Aluminum-Ion Battery: A Sustainable and Seminal Concept? journal May 2019