Poster 21

Zhiping Yang UT-Physics

Silicon fracture at liquid nitrogen temperature We present the experimental study of dynamic silicon fracture at liquid nitrogen temperature. Theoritical and numerical studies of the lattice model for dynamic fracture predicted that at very low temperature (such as liquid nitrogen temperature, 77K), certain range of crack velocity is forbiden. That is, a crack can only propagate with a non-zero minimum speed(so called velocity gap) when the sample is cold down to cryogenic temperature. The experiment is to determine whether this prediction is correct.