The increasing use of oxide glasses in high-tech applications illustrates the demand of novel engineering techniques on nano- and microscale. Due to the high viscosity of oxide glasses at room temperature, shaping operations are usually performed at temperatures close or beyond the point of glass transition Tg. Those treatments, however, are global and affect the whole component. It is known from literature that electron irradiation facilitates viscous flow of amorphous silica near room temperature for nanoscale components. At the micrometer scale, however, a comprehensive study on this topic was still pending.
In the present study, electron irradiation inducing viscous flow at room temperature was observed using a micro pillar compression approach and amorphous silica as model system. A comparison to high temperature yielding up to a temperature of 1100°C demonstrates that even moderate electron irradiation resembles the mechanical response of 600°C and beyond. As an extreme case a yield strength as low as 300 MPa was observed with a viscosity indicating that Tg has been passed. Those results show that electron irradiation facilitated viscous flow is not limited to the nanoscale which offers great potential for local microengineering.