When a strongly textured hexagonal close packed (HCP) metal is loaded under an orientation causing profuse twinning or detwinning, the stress-strain curve is sigmoidal in shape and inflects at some threshold. Authors have largely attributed the dramatic stress increase in the lower-bound vicinity of the inflection point to a combined effect of a Hall-Petch mechanism correlated to grain refineme...

Plastic deformation of nanocrystalline Fe was investigated by nanoindentation. Samples, synthesized by mechanical attrition, consisted of powder particles with diameters greater than 30 mm. The average grain diameters within the particles of different samples ranged from 10 nm to 10 mm. To avoid potential artifacts, samples were prepared without use of heat treatment, and measurements were cond...

A novel design electroplating spring frame MEMS structure specimen is demonstrated here. The specimen can be fit into a specially designed microtensile apparatus which is capable of carrying out a series of tests on submicro scale freestanding thin films. Certain thin films applicable in MEMS were tested including sputtered Chrome, Nicole, Copper, Tantalum Nitride thin films. Metal specimens we...

Metals with nanoscale twins have shown ultrahigh strength and excellent ductility, attributed to the role of twin boundaries (TBs) as strong barriers for the motion of lattice dislocations. Though observed in both experiments and simulations, the barrier effect of TBs is rarely studied quantitatively. Here, with atomistic simulations and continuum based anisotropic bicrystal models, we find tha...

Size-affected dislocation-mediated plasticity is important in a wide range of materials and technologies. Here we develop a generalized size-dependent dislocation-based model that predicts strength as a function of crystal/grain size and the dislocation density. Three-dimensional (3D) discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulations reveal the existence of a well-defined relationship between str...

In this study, the structural and nanomechanical properties of Cu₂O thin films are investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and nanoindentation techniques. The Cu₂O thin films are deposited on the glass substrates with the various growth temperatures of 150, 250 and 350 °C by using radio frequency magnetron sputtering. The XRD re...

The statistical-thermodynamic dislocation theory developed in previous papers is used here in an analysis of yielding transitions and grain-size effects in polycrystalline solids. Calculations are based on the 1995 experimental results of Meyers, Andrade, and Chokshi [Metall. Mater. Trans. A 26, 2881 (1995)MMTAEB1073-562310.1007/BF02669646] for polycrystalline copper under strain-hardening cond...

The industrially-important WC-Co composite materials provide a useful, albeit complicated materials system for understanding the combined influences on hardness and strength properties of the constituent WC particle strengths, the particle sizes, their contiguities, and of Co binder hardness and mean free paths, and in total, the volume fraction of constituents. A connection is made here betwee...

The mechanical properties of aluminum are shown to be of special importance beginning from the early 20th century production of the material in single crystal and polycrystalline form. Experimental and theoretical researches of the time were concerned with particular influence of polycrystalline microstructure and the presence of crystal (grain) boundaries on both the material strength properti...