Dislocation nucleation mediated plasticity of FCC nanowires

Nanowires have gained a significant attention as a key component applicable to various devices and advanced materials. Hence, it is essential to ensure the mechanical stability and reliability of nanowires for the realization of devices based on nanowires. In addition, nanowires provide a unique test bed for studying the fundamental mechanism associated with plastic deformations of materials. When the size of specimen reduces below a critical scale (sub-100 nm), the population of vacancies, dislocations, as well as the grain boundaries decreases significantly, which allows us to study a completely new deformation mechanism that cannot be observed in bulk scale. This chapter involves a brief review on the deformation mechanism of sub-100 nm crystalline nanowires with FCC (facecentered cubic) crystal structure, which is relatively well characterized via molecular dynamics and dislocation dynamics simulations as well as in-situ and ex-situ nanotension experiments.