It is commonly assumed that grain boundary sliding can control plastic deformation in fine grained crystalline solids.  Superplasticity is often considered to be controlled by grain boundary sliding, for example.  I have never accepted that view, though my own opinion is very much at odds with the commonly accepted picture.  When I was asked to write a paper in honor of Professor F.R.N. Nabarro's 90th birthday (Prof.

The attached file is a set of class notes developed by W.D. Nix of Stanford University and used in a graduate course on Mechanical Properties of Thin Films. These notes have been used in the graduate course MSE 353 since the late 1980's. That course has been taught every year or so since that time. The notes were last updated in January of 2005. The reader will see a note to the effect that many of the figures and illustrations in the file have been taken from the work of students and colleagues at Stanford without proper attribution.