中国科学院地球化学研究所机构知识库

The strength of a material can be altered by temperature, pressure, grain size, and orientation distributions. At the microscale, neighboring grains often play important roles in the elastic and plastic deformation process. By applying high pressure to a mixture of germanium and gold powder in the vicinity of the germanium phase transition pressure, we found that the deformation behavior of gold largely correlates with that of the surrounding germanium. The deviatoric strain and compressibility of Au behaves anomalously when Ge undergoes a diamond to beta-tin structure transition, accompanying a large volume and strength drop. The results demonstrate that the intrinsic strength of a mixed phase could be largely controlled by the other surrounding phase, which is fundamentally important in understanding the deformation mechanism of multiphase materials, especially when one phase undergoes dramatic changes in strength under high pressure conditions.