Matthieu Bourguignon, Gustavo A. Rosales‐Sosa, Yoshinari Kato, Bruno Bresson, Hikaru Ikeda, Shingo Nakane, Gergely Molnár, Hiroki Yamazaki, Etienne Barthel
Linking crack initiation in silicate glasses to shear banding identifies shear localization as a key driver of fracture in this archetypal brittle material. The results unify network glasses with other families of amorphous solids, such as bulk metallic glasses and glassy polymers, by exposing common mechanisms of plastic deformation. This universality calls for a general theory of flow and failure in amorphous solids.