Anomalous mechanical behavior of nanocrystalline binary alloys under extreme conditions.

Fundamentally, material flow stress increases exponentially at deformation rates exceeding, typically, ~10 s, resulting in brittle failure. The origin of such behavior derives from the dislocation motion causing non-Arrhenius deformation at higher strain rates due to drag forces from phonon interactions. Here, we discover that this assumption is prevented from manifesting when microstructural length is stabilized at an extremely fine size (nanoscale regime).