Time-, stress-, and temperature-dependent deformation in nanostructured copper: Creep tests and simulations

In the present work, we performed experiments, atomistic simulations, and high-resolution electron microscopy (HREM) to study the creep behaviors of the nanotwinned (nt) and nanograined (ng) copper at temperatures of 22 °C (RT), 40 °C, 50 °C, 60 °C, and 70 °C. The experimental data at various temperatures and different sustained stress levels provide sufficient information, which allows one to extract the deformation parameters reliably. The determined activation parameters and microscopic observations indicate transition of creep mechanisms with variation in stress level in the nt-Cu, i.e., from the Coble creep to the twin boundary (TB) migration and eventually to the perfect dislocation nucleation and activities. The experimental and simulation results imply that nanotwinning could be an effective approach to enhance the creep resistance of twin-free ng-Cu. The experimental creep results further verify the newly developed formula (Yang et al., 2016) that describes the time-, stress-, and temperature-dependent plastic deformation in polycrystalline copper.