Researchers from LaserON group and University of North Texas (USA) explain the brittle-to-ductile transition in glass nanofibers.
In recent years it has been experimentally observed the brittle-to-ductile transition in glass nanofibers, being the reasons of this behavior still controversial.
In a recent paper published in the prestigious journal Discover Nano, researchers from LaserON group and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of North Texas, Denton (USA), address the role of coordination defects on the surface of glass nanofibers and their influence on the mechanical properties of nanofibers. Through several systematic series of molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the transition from brittle to ductile fracture depends on the length of the nanofibers rather than on their diameter.
Our results suggest that glass nanofibers ductility is constrained to extremely small diameters and gauge lengths in the order of a few hundreds of nanometers. For larger scales, fracture corresponds to typical brittle behavior where the classic Griffith theory remains valid.
Read the paper here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s11671-025-04210-0#article-info
And see the simulation videos here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s11671-025-04210-0#Sec13