in situ TEM deformation

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

In situ studies of deformation in metal nanowires have yielded interesting results, as recently published in Nature Communications. An international research team performed cyclic loading on gold nanowires and observed twinning and detwinning phenomena, respectively caused by tensile and compressive loading, and elucidate the underpinning mechanism by molecular dynamics simulations.

‚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).

Metallic glass in bulk form is known to have superb strength and elastic response but very limited plastic deformation ability. Through machining the metaillinc glass into submicometer pillars, experiment found that metallic glass can actually sustain very large plastic doformation (see attached Figure).  The detail of this finding can be found in our most recent publication: Z. W. Shan et al, Plastic flow and failure resistance of metallic glass: Insight from in situ compression of nanopillars, Phys. Rev. B 77, 155419 (2008) (6 pages).