| Abstract Scope |
An inch-scale metal/ceramic/metal (MCM) nanocomposite reinforced by ceramic nanoarchitectures, overcoming conventional prediction of the strength of an existing composite system will be presented. Proximity-field nanopatterning (PnP), which shows simultaneous enhancement of the large production area and high spatial resolution, enables inch-scale production of the nanocomposite in a single fabrication step. 3D Ni/Al2O3/Ni nanocomposite system shows significantly higher compressive strength (1.78 GPa), ~30 % increase compared to that calculated by upper bounds of conventional rule of mixture (1.36 GPa). Such high strength of the 3D MCM nanocomposite is attributed to the extrinsic size effect of ceramic thin-shell, where the thinner ceramic layer has higher fracture strength eventually leading to brittle-to-ductile transition of the ceramic layer. By combining the size-induced strengthening of ceramics into the conventional strengthening law in composite, a new strengthening model is derived and experimentally demonstrated using 3D Ni/Al2O3/Ni nanocomposite system. |