Abstract Lamellar eutectics are known to evidence plastic shear in otherwise brittle intermetallics, if the lamella spacing is small enough. Here we pursue this idea of confined plasticity in intermetallics further and demonstrate room-temperature shear-deformation in a two-phase CuAl2-CuAl intermetallic nano-composite. The presence of a phase with a 3-fold symmetry is also revealed after deformation. Simulation of transmission electron microscopy images shows this to be monoclinic CuAl. These observations are made in the deformation zone underneath locations of nanoindents, of which the force-displacement curves exhibit an unusual response of continuously increasing pop-in sizes with load.

中文翻译：

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Cu-Al金属间化合物室温剪切变形的证据

摘要 已知层状共晶可以证明脆性金属间化合物中的塑性剪切，如果层状间距足够小。在这里，我们进一步追求金属间化合物中受限塑性的想法，并证明了两相 CuAl2-CuAl 金属间化合物纳米复合材料的室温剪切变形。变形后还揭示了具有 3 重对称性的相的存在。透射电子显微镜图像的模拟表明这是单斜铜铝。这些观察是在纳米压痕位置下方的变形区中进行的，其中的力-位移曲线表现出随负载不断增加的弹出尺寸的异常响应。