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Joint molecular dynamics
and powder diffraction studies on
processing-structure
relations in nano-SiC ceramics.
Marcin Wojdyr,
Izabela Szlufarska, Materials Science and Engineering
It is known that
the excellent mechanical properties of silicon carbide (SiC)
based polycrystalline ceramics can be further improved
by decreasing its grain size to nanometer regime.
However, a detailed understanding of the processing –
structure – property relation is still lacking.
The main goal of
our research is to unveil the processing – structure
relation. To achieve it, we are coupling Molecular
Dynamics (MD) simulations with powder diffraction
techniques.
MD provides
trajectories of all the atoms, giving a direct view of
the virtual microstructure. X-ray and neutron
diffractions are the most important experimental
techniques for microstructure characterization. Although
they do not provide details visible in MD, they can
validate MD results. On the other hand, we can calculate
diffraction patterns from virtual structure and verify
applicability of the well-established diffraction
analysis methods to nanoceramics [1].
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