非晶纤维的制备和力学行为

将块体材料制备成微纳米纤维时,其力学性能会得到进一步的提高,甚至具备块体材料所没有的力学行为.非晶态材料可经过熔体拉丝一次性成型而得到所需尺寸的均匀纤维,纤维表面质量好,其制备过程相对简单且节能.由于非晶材料短程有序、长程无序的结构,具备优异的力学性能,所以非晶纤维有着广泛的应用前景和基础研究价值.本文对能制备成非晶纤维且有优异力学性能的材料做了简单介绍,对非晶纤维的制备方法及其成型物理机制、非晶纤维的力学行为及其物理机制进行了综述,最后总结了非晶纤维的制备和力学行为的研究中存在的问题,对非晶纤维的发展前景做了展望.

Fabrications and mechanical behaviors of amorphous fibers

Mechanical properties of micro- and nanoscale fibers are superior to their bulk counterparts, and their mechanical behaviors are different from each other. Homogeneous amorphous fibers with smooth surfaces and controllable sizes can be continuously drawn from supercooled liquid. Compared with the preparing of crystalline fibers, the manufacturing of amorphous fibers saves much energy and time. Furthermore, amorphous materials have excellent mechanical properties due to their short-ranged ordered and long-ranged disordered structures. Therefore, amorphous fibers have wide engineering applications and research interest. In this paper we review the fabrication and mechanical behaviors of amorphous fibers with excellent mechanical properties including oxide glass fibers and amorphous alloy fibers.
There are continuous and discontinuous oxide glass micro-fibers. Discontinuous oxide glass micro-fibers can be fabricated by techniques in which a thin thread of melt flowing from the bottom of a container is broken into segments. Continuous oxide micro-fibers can be fabricated by techniques in which a filament of supercooled liquid is drawn from melt. However, oxide glass nano-fibers can be fabricated by chemical vapor deposition, laser ablation, sol-gel, and thermal evaporation methods. Fabrication techniques of amorphous alloy fibers are very different from those of oxide glass fibers. These techniques adopt in-rotating-water spinning method, melt-extraction method, Taylor method, nanomoulding method, fast drawing method, melt drawing method, and gas atomization method.
Microscale oxide glass fiber has a facture strength as high as 6 GPa. The fracture strength of nanoscale oxide glass fiber can reach 26 GPa which is close to the theoretical strength of 30 GPa. On the other hand, the plasticity of microscale amorphous alloy fibers is mediated by shear banding. The shear band spacing decreases with reducing sample size in bending. However, there is no tensile plasticity in microscale amorphous alloy fibers. When the sample size is smaller than the size of shear band core (500 nm), inhomogeneous plastic deformation transforms into homogeneous plastic deformation. The tensile plasticity of amorphous alloy is significantly improved. The homogeneous plastic deformation is mediated by catalyzed shear transformation. The catalyzed shear transformation may be the origin of hardening behaviors of nanoscale amorphous alloy fibers.
Fianlly, we summary the unsolved problems in the fabrications and mechanical behaviors of amorphous fibers, and discuss the prospect of amorphous fibers.