Impulsive Fracture of Silicon by Elastic Surface Pulses with Shocks

During nonlinear evolution of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) stress increases with propagation, and may cause fracture of brittle materials. This effect was used to evaluate the strength of crystalline silicon with respect to impulsive load in the nanosecond time scale without using seed cracks. Short SAW pulses propagating in the [11(macro)2] direction on the Si(111) plane induce fracture at significantly lower SAW amplitudes than the mirror symmetric wave propagating in the [112(macro)] direction. This effect is explained by the differences in elastic nonlinearity of the two propagation directions.