Experimentation and modeling of mechanical integrity and instability at metal/ceramic interfaces

Abstract

Controlling the mechanical integrity of metal/ceramic interfaces is important for a wide range of technological applications. Achievement of such control requires a number of key elements, including establishing appropriate experimental protocols for quantifying mechanical response of metal/ceramic interfacial regions under well-defined loading conditions, understanding how interfacial compositional and structural characteristics impact such interfacial mechanical response, and elucidating unit interface physics and predicting interfacial mechanical response via development of multiscale physics-based models. Achieving this combined testing, understanding, and modeling will ultimately lead to effectivecontrol of mechanical integrity of metal/ceramic interfaces and true interfacial engineering through targeted modification of the interfacial composition and structure. Major breakthroughs in the improvement of interfacial mechanical integrity can be enabled by understanding and controlling key physical factors, including interfacial architectural and chemical features governing the mechanical response of metal/ceramic interfacial regions (MCIRs), thus leading to unprecedented interfacial mechanical performance that meets/exceeds the demands of future applications. Guided by a multiscale integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) framework, the mechanical integrity of MCIRs can be substantially improved by a variety of architectural and chemical enhancements/refinements. Recent research efforts by the authors aim to provide a fundamental, physics-based understanding of the failure mechanisms of MCIRs by constructing a novel, multiscale, computation-guided, and experiment-validated ICME framework. Interfacial refinements to be explored within this framework include addition of alloying impurities as well as geometrical features such as multilayered and stepped interfacial architectures. The findings can then be consolidated into a high fidelity, experiment-validated, micro- and mesoscale modeling tool to significantly accelerate the discovery-design-implementation cycle of advanced MCIRs. In this chapter, we summarize some preliminary results on shear failure and instability of various metal/ceramic interfacial regions, outline the theoretical background of this research thrust, and identify challenges and opportunities in this area.