An investigation of combined size, rate and thermal effects on the material properties of single crystal diamond

The ability to predict the properties of material specimens with different sizes under various loading rates and temperatures is essential to evaluating the integrity and durability of NEMS/MEMS devices under extreme loading conditions. To better understand the rate, thermal and crystal orientation effects on size-dependent material responses, Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations are performed with the use of Single Crystal Diamond (SCD) of various sizes under uniaxial tensile loading. In the MD simulations, the responses of SCD blocks of different sizes under <100> and <110> tensions at different loading rates and temperatures are studied. By combining the available experimental and simulation data, a hyper-surface is formulated to predict the combined size, rate and thermal effects on the strength of pristine diamond.