An enhancement in the electrical performance of low temperature screen-printed silver nanoparticles (nAg) has been measured at frequencies up to 220 GHz. We show that for frequencies above 80 GHz the electrical losses in coplanar waveguide structures fabricated using nAg at 350 o C are lower than those found in conventional thick film Ag conductors consisting of micron-sized grains and fabricated at 850 o C. The improved electrical performance is attributed to the better packing of the silver nanoparticles resulting in lower surface roughness by a factor of three. We discuss how the use of silver nanoparticles offers new routes to high frequency applications on temperature sensitive conformal substrates and in sub-THz metamaterials.

We present large-scale molecular dynamic simulations of microcrack growth in α-iron based on an N -body potential model which gives a good description of defect energetics, anisotropic elasticity and phonon frequency spectra. We demonstrate dynamic overshoot of a pre-existing microcrack under impact loading. We show that the basic behaviour of the simulations is in agreement with the predictions of continuum models. Dynamic phenomena, such as scattering of stress waves at crack faces, acoustic emission (due to bond breakage) and reflections of the stress waves from sample borders, are studied here in detail. The results on microcrack growth, unimpeded by the wave reflections from external sample borders, indicate that under fast loading or at high crack velocities, i.e. under high strain rates, transient twin formation is possible from the crack tip with later detwinning at free crack faces as the crack advances: a twinning equivalent to virtual Knott dislocations.

We present a detailed analysis of the ductile versus brittle response of bcc iron containing a sharp crack and show that a continuum model based on the Peierls-Nabarro model for dislocation formation is consistent with our atomistic results. Specifically, we compare continuum predictions for dislocation emission from a crack tip loaded in mode I under plane strain, tensile conditions with atomistic results for a (1 1 0)[1 1 0] crack emitting full edge dislocations in the 1 1 1 {1 1 2} slip system. The simulations are based on an N-body potential of the Finnis-Sinclair type for iron at 0 K, and the continuum dislocation model incorporates recent improvements that account for tension-shear coupling on a prescribed slip plane, as well as the T-stress, in an anisotropic solid. We show that the critical load for dislocation nucleation is influenced by the T-stress (modulated by the level of external stress applied parallel to the crack plane in a biaxially-loaded plate), which possesses a critical value associated with a change of mechanism between dislocation emission and crack extension. The results are consistent with recent preliminary analyses that address the effect of crack size and the role of the T-stress in the ductile versus brittle response of crystals.

Polymer composites with nanomaterials such as graphene nanoplatelets and carbon nanotubes are a new group of materials with high application possibilities in printed and flexible electronics. In this study such carbon nanomaterials were used as a conductive phase in polymer composites. Pastes with dispersed nanomaterials in PMMA and PVDF vehicles were screen printed on flexible substrates, and used as an active layer in pressure sensors, exploiting contact resistance phenomena. The relationship between resistance and pressure is nearly linear on a logarithmic scale for selected types of samples, and their response is several times higher than for similar sensors with graphite layers. The use of surfactants allowed us to fabricate evenly dispersed nanomaterials with different amount of nanoplatelets and nanotubes in the composites. The samples contained from 1.25 wt.% to 2 wt.% of graphene and 1 wt.% to 0.5 wt.% of nanotubes and exhibited diverse sheet resistivity. Experiments revealed the relationship between morphology and loading of functional phase in the polymer matrix and the sensors' sensitivity.

We present large scale atomistic simulations of crack growth in iron under quasistatic loading in mode I. We show that long cracks display a brittle character of extension, while the growth of smaller cracks is accompanied by emission of partial dislocations from the crack tip and subsequent transformation of the stacking faults behind the dislocations to multilayer twins. The competing shear processes at a crack tip are characterized in terms of the relative sliding of up to four adjacent atomic planes emanating from the crack tip region. The results are in agreement with a global energy balance derived from perfect samples, and with experimental observations that twinning and fracture are cooperating processes under sufficiently large quasistatic loading at low temperatures.