Hydrogen-stabilized dual-phase architecture enables ductility in refractory molybdenum nanowires

DOI

<p>Enhancing the ductility of refractory body-centered cubic (BCC) metals at the nanoscale remains challenging because limited dislocation mobility can lead to premature brittle fracture. Here, we show that a face-centered cubic (FCC)/BCC dual-phase structure can be formed in Mo nanowires (NWs) via non-equilibrium electron-stream excitation (electric current or electron-beam irradiation). Atomic-scale characterizations and first-principles calculations indicate that interstitial hydrogen stabilizes the FCC phase at the NW surface. The dual-phase NWs exhibit ~41.4% uniform elongation along the [011] direction, corresponding to a ~300% increase relative to single-phase BCC NWs. The observed deformation involves two hydrogen-mediated processes: (1) during early plastic deformation, a two-step FCC-to-BCC transformation proceeds through fractional dislocation slip and relieves local stress concentrations, thereby suppressing surface crack initiation; (2) hydrogen promotes dislocation nucleation by modifying surface energy and unstable stacking-fault energy, thereby sustaining plastic flow and delaying failure. These results show that hydrogen-mediated phase transformation and dislocation nucleation enhance the deformability of nanoscale Mo.</p>

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:by-zg
Related Identifier https://archive.materialscloud.org/communities/mcarchive
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:df-w7
Metadata Access https://archive.materialscloud.org/oai2d?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&identifier=oai:materialscloud.org:jry4m-9gg51
Provenance
Creator Hou, Yuxuan; Cao, Haixuan; Huayu, Peng; Huang, Ruilong; Wang, Huaiyuan; Yu, Bochun; Zhao, Peili; Jia, Shuangfeng; Zheng, He; Wang, Jianbo
Publisher Materials Cloud
Publication Year 2026
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode
OpenAccess true
Contact archive(at)materialscloud.org
Representation
Language English
Resource Type info:eu-repo/semantics/other
Format text/plain; application/zip
Discipline Materials Science and Engineering