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Yielding and plasticity in amorphous solids

Nature Reviews Physics volume 7, pages 313–330 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Disordered media include metallic glasses, colloidal suspensions, granular matter and biological tissues, among others. Their physics offers difficult challenges because it often occurs far from equilibrium, in materials that lack symmetries and that evolve through complex energy landscapes. We review theoretical efforts from recent years to provide microscopic insights into the mechanical properties of amorphous media using approaches from statistical mechanics as unifying frameworks. Our focus is on how amorphous solids become unstable and yield under applied deformations. We cover both the initial regime, corresponding to small deformations of the solid, and the transition between elastic response and plastic flow when the solid yields. We discuss the specific features arising for systems evolving near a jamming transition and extend our discussion to recent studies of the rheology of dense biological and active materials. We emphasize the importance of a unified approach to studying the response to deformation and the yielding instability of a broad range of disordered media.

Key points

  • The mechanical response of amorphous solids under deformation exhibits universal features across a range of materials from glasses to biological tissues.

  • Yielding behaviour strongly depends on the preparation history and stability of the amorphous solid, influencing whether the material fails in a ductile or brittle manner.

  • Plasticity involves intermittent avalanches whose statistics reflect underlying criticality and are sensitive to the density and nature of localized defects.

  • A critical point separates brittle and ductile yielding regimes, analogous to a spinodal transition in the presence of quenched disorder, revealing deep connections with non-equilibrium phase transitions.

  • The understanding of yielding has been extended to active and biological matter, where topological interactions and internal activity may lead to novel rheological behaviours.

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Fig. 1: Deformation and yielding of amorphous solids spanning a broad range of timescales, length scales and physical behaviours.
Fig. 2: Oscillatory strain, reversibility and memory.
Fig. 3: The yielding instability.
Fig. 4: Shear-yielding and shear-jamming.
Fig. 5: Plasticity defects in amorphous solids.
Fig. 6: The vertex model for biological tissues.
Fig. 7: Yielding instability due to persistent active forces.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank all members and affiliates of the Simons collaboration, and the whole community, for discussions. This work was supported by a grant from the Simons Foundation (#454933 L.B., #454935 G.B., #454947 L.M., #454955 F.Z.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gulliver, UMR CNRS 7083, ESPCI Paris, PSL Research University, Paris, France

    Ludovic Berthier

  2. Laboratoire de Physique de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France

    Giulio Biroli

  3. Department of Physics, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Lisa Manning

  4. Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Zamponi

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Berthier, L., Biroli, G., Manning, L. et al. Yielding and plasticity in amorphous solids. Nat Rev Phys 7, 313–330 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-025-00833-5

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