Daniel Kiener's blog

The microelectronics revolution is one of the most influential drivers of current industrial developments. To probe the mechanical properties of ever shrinking materials and components, nanoindentation has come to be an omnipresent and indispensable method. In a recent combined experimental and computational approach, an international team of scientists was for the first time able to resolve the dynamic atomistic processes taking place at the elastic-plastic transition during nanoindentation.

Small-scale mechanics, especially in situ in electron microscopes, is what I enjoy spending my time with. Within this monthly journal club topic on iMechanica, I would like to give a quick recapitulation of what happened in micromechanics, of course with special emphasis to in situ techniques, over the last years to set the stage. Subsequently, we should revisit some longstanding issues before turning towards recent developments in the field of fracture testing.

Reversible deformation of metal nanowires accommodating large strains by twinning-detwinning

‚Source truncation and exhaustion: Insights from quantitative in-situ
TEM tensile testing' by D. Kiener and A.M. Minor (http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl201890s).

Dear colleagues,

we recently published a paper on measuring bulk properties of irradiated copper from nanoscale samples:

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat3055.html

Hope you find this interesting!

Daniel

Dear colleagues,

Experimental nanomechanics is a frequently discussed topic on imechanica, see e.g. the very active monthly topics by Xiaodong Li, Julia Greer and Wei Cai.

Continuing on this, I would like to draw your attention to a paper we recently published:

"In situ observation of dislocation nucleation and escape in a submicrometre aluminium single crystal" by Sang Ho Oh, Marc Legros, Daniel Kiener & Gerhard Dehm (http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n2/abs/nmat2370.html).