Stress-relaxation experiments were performed on nanotwinned Cu to characterize the twin size-dependence of the activation volume and mobile dislocation density. We find that the variation of activation volume as a function of twin lamellae thickness can be captured well by a Hall–Petch-type relation. This structure size-dependence is interpreted to arise from a transition of the rate-controllin...

Through in situ indentation of TiN in a high-resolution transmission electron microscope, the nucleation of full as well as partial dislocations has been observed from {001} and {111} surfaces, respectively. The critical elastic strains associated with the nucleation of the dislocations were analyzed from the recorded atomic displacements, and the nucleation stresses corresponding to the measur...

Structural changes during the deformation-induced synthesis of nanocrystalline Fe-10Cr-3Al alloy powder via high-energy ball milling followed by annealing and rapid consolidation by spark plasma sintering were investigated. Reduction in crystallite size was observed during the synthesis, which was associated with the lattice expansion and rise in dislocation density, reflecting the generation o...

Copper monocrystals were subjected to shock compression at pressures of 10-60 GPa by a short (3 ns initial) duration laser pulse. Transmission electron microscopy revealed features consistent with previous observations of shock-compressed copper, albeit at pulse durations in the us regime. The results suggest that the defect structure is generated at the shock front. A mechanism for dislocation...

The phenomenon of dislocation patterning during melt growth of III-V, II-VI and IV-VI semiconductor crystals is discussed. The paper is focused on the formation of cellular structures driven by the growth inherent thermo-mechanical stress. Of particular interest is the scaling of relations between cells size, dislocation density and acting shear stress. Among the materials there are characteris...

Strained thin films often contain ordered networks of misfit dislocations which can determine their chemical and mechanical properties. We consider the reaction of sulfur with two-monolayer films of Cu on Ru(0001). These films contain a network of parallel partial dislocations, separating regions of fcc and hcp stacking, with threading edge dislocations where partial dislocations meet. Sulfur r...

Previous density functional theory (DFT) studies of the 1/3 h1 210i screw dislocation in titanium have shown metastable core structures depending on the initial position of the dislocation line. We investigate this problem by modeling a screw dislocation with two initial positions using both DFT and a modified embedded atom (MEAM) potential for Ti with flexible boundary conditions. Both DFT and...

Microstructural analyses of thermal or mechanical fatigued Nitinol show remarkable similarities and are characterized by an increase in dislocation density with increasing number of cycles. Dislocation bands, which are thought to be due to the effects of moving martensite interfaces, align with the martensite lattice invariant plane. These microstructural effects result in modification of trans...

The characteristics of confined epitaxial growth are investigated with the goal of determining the contributing effects of mask attributes (spacing, feature size) and growth conditions (V/III ratio, pressure, temperature) on the efficiency of the approach for dislocation density reduction of GaN. In addition to standard (secondary electron and atomic force) microscopy, electron channeling contr...

We report results of uniaxial compression experiments on single-crystalline Cu nanopillars with nonzero initial dislocation densities produced without focused ion beam (FIB). Remarkably, we find the same power-law size-driven strengthening as FIB-fabricated face-centered cubic micropillars. TEM analysis reveals that initial dislocation density in our FIB-less pillars and those produced by FIB a...