An order-disorder core-shell strategy for enhanced work-hardening capability and ductility in nanostructured alloys.

Nanocrystalline metallic materials have the merit of high strength but usually suffer from poor ductility and rapid grain coarsening, limiting their practical application. Here, we introduce a core-shell nanostructure in a multicomponent alloy to address these challenges simultaneously, achieving a high tensile strength of 2.65 GPa, a large uniform elongation of 17%, and a high thermal stability of 1173 K.

Phase Engineering of Nanostructural Metallic Materials: Classification, Structures, and Applications.

Metallic materials are usually composed of single phase or multiple phases, which refers to homogeneous regions with distinct types of the atom arrangement. The recent studies on nanostructured metallic materials provide a variety of promising approaches to engineer the phases at the nanoscale. Tailoring phase size, phase distribution, and introducing new structures via phase transformation contribute to the precise modification in deformation behaviors and electronic structures of nanostructural metallic materials.

Ultrastrong nanotwinned pure nickel with extremely fine twin thickness.

The strength of nanocrystalline and nanotwinned metals stops increasing or even starts decreasing when their grain size or twin thickness is below a critical size-a phenomenon known as Hall-Petch breakdown-which hinders the attainment of ultrahigh strength. Here, we report continuous strengthening in nanotwinned pure Ni with twin thicknesses ranging from 81.0 to 2.