Materials with a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) crystal structure such as Mg, Ti and Zr are being used in the transportation, aerospace and nuclear industry, respectively. Material strength and formability are critical qualities for shaping these materials into parts and a pervasive deformation mechanism that significantly affects their formability is deformation twinning. The interaction between...

We report that defect-free Au nanowires show superplasticity on tensile deformation. Evidences from high-resolution electron microscopes indicated that the plastic deformation proceeds layer-by-layer in an atomically coherent fashion to a long distance. Furthermore, the stress-strain curve provides full interpretation of the deformation. After initial superelastic deformation, the nanowire show...

The three-dimensional nature of twins, especially the atomic structures and motion mechanisms of the boundary lateral to the shear direction of the twin, has never been characterized at the atomic level, because such boundary is, in principle, crystallographically unobservable. We thus refer to it here as the dark side of the twin. Here, using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy an...

Twins born after 30 weeks gestation were studied. One twin was reared with a water pillow for head support for 36 days and retained a more rounded head shape, comparable to the normal configuration at birth. The other twin had standard neonatal care and developed the scaphocephalic head typical of most ex-preterm infants. It is suggested that water pillows constitute a simple method of reducing...

The deformation of copper single crystals at 4.2 K occurs by a sequence of slip, twinning and slip in the twinned structure. Subsequent annealing of the deformed structures obtained at various points at this sequence of deformation permits the detailed nature of the deformed and recrystallized states to be related in a unique fashion. Material recrystallized from structures obtained prior to th...

Molecular dynamics simulations were performed to demonstrate the synergistic effects of the extrinsic size (nanowire length) and intrinsic size (twin boundary spacing) on the failure manner, yield strength, ductility and deformation mechanism of the twinned nanowires containing high density coherent twin boundaries CTBs paralleled to the nanowires’ axis. The twinned nanowires show an intense ex...

We have performed in situ scanning electron microscopy tensile experiments and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations on nominally defect-free single-crystalline Au nanowhiskers. The room temperature experiments reveal strengths on the order of the ideal strength and plastic strains of up to 12%, a direct result of deformation twinning that governs plastic flow. The in situ and post mortem electro...

severe plastic deformation (spd) methods were developed for producing of metals and alloys with ultrafine grained (ufg) microstructures having high strength. parallel tabular channel angular pressing (ptcap) as a noble severe plastic deformation (spd) method was used to produce ultrafine grained (ufg) and nanostructured cu-30%zn tubes. in this paper, the effect of ptcap process temperature on t...

Parallel molecular dynamics simulations were used to study the influence of pre-existing growth twin boundaries on the slip activity of bulk gold under uniaxial compression. The simulations were performed on a 3D, fully periodic simulation box at 300 K with a constant strain rate of 4×10 s. Different twin boundary interspacings from 2 nm to 16 nm were investigated. The strength of bulk nano-twi...