Making ceramics ductile at low homologous temperatures

Polycrystalline ceramics are brittle at room temperature but may deform by dislocation slip processes at higher temperatures, where T ≥ 0.5 T M (T M, the melting temperature), leading to strain hardening, i.e. the total strain to rupture is limited. We show that mutual sliding of nanometer grains and atomic transport along their boundaries enables low-temperature metal-like plasticity in nanocrystalline ceramics. Compression of fully dense MgO nanoceramics at temperatures as low as 700 deg. C (0.31 T M) exhibited stress-strain curves with no strain hardening