Deformation characteristics of solid-state benzene as a step towards understanding planetary geology
Abstract
Small organic molecules, like ethane and benzene, are ubiquitous in the atmosphere and surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan, forming plains, dunes, canyons, and other surface features. Understanding Titan's dynamic geology and designing future landing missions requires sufficient knowledge of the mechanical characteristics of these solid-state organic minerals, which is currently lacking. To understand the deformation and mechanical properties of a representative solid organic material at space-relevant temperatures, we freeze liquid micro-droplets of benzene to form ~10 μm-tall single-crystalline pyramids and uniaxially compress them in situ. These micromechanical experiments reveal contact pressures decaying from ~2 to ~0.5 GPa after ~1 μm-reduction in pyramid height. The deformation occurs via a series of stochastic (~5-30 nm) displacement bursts, corresponding to densification and stiffening of the compressed material during cyclic loading to progressively higher loads. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal predominantly plastic deformation and densified region formation by the re-orientation and interplanar shear of benzene rings, providing a two-step stiffening mechanism. This work demonstrates the feasibility of in-situ cryogenic nanomechanical characterization of solid organics as a pathway to gain insights into the geophysics of planetary bodies.
Additional Information
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. J.R.G. and R.H. gratefully acknowledge the financial support of JPL's Research and Technology Development program, as well as the critical infrastructure of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech. X.Z. acknowledges the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdocs. H.G. acknowledges a research start-up grant (002479-00001, H.G.) from Nanyang Technological University and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). R.H. acknowledges the support of the JPL Researches on Campus program. Parts of this research were carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004, R.H.). Contributions. H.G., J.R.G., R.H., and M.J.M. contributed to the conceptualization and methodology design. B.W.E., W.Z., X.Z., and L.Z. performed the investigation. W.Z. and X.Z. analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. H.G., J.R.G., and R.H. edited the manuscript. H.G. and J.R.G. supervised the study. W.Z. and X.Z. contributed equally to the work. Data availability. The processed experimental data and simulation videos are provided in the Supplementary Information. The raw data are protected and are not available due to data privacy restrictions. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to W.Z. The authors declare no competing interests. Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.Attached Files
Published - 41467_2022_Article_35647.pdf
Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_35647_MOESM1_ESM.pdf
Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_35647_MOESM2_ESM.pdf
Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_35647_MOESM3_ESM.mp4
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Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_35647_MOESM5_ESM.mp4
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Supplemental Material - 41467_2022_35647_MOESM7_ESM.mp4
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC9792550
- Eprint ID
- 118931
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20230125-514337900.7
- JPL Research and Technology Development Fund
- Humboldt University
- Nanyang Technological University
- 002479-00001
- Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- 80NM0018D0004
- Created
-
2023-01-30Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-07-05Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute