Hall-Petch analysis of dislocation pileups in thin material layers and in nanopolycrystals

A potential order-of-magnitude increase in Hall-Petch (H-P)-based strength level for nanoscale grain-size structures is an important enabler of electronic thin film material design applications. Dislocation pileups of smaller lengths in such thin film materials are blocked in a screw orientation at the through-thickness grain boundaries of relatively larger grains. For fully nanopolycrystalline materials, both strength and strain rate sensitivity measurements exhibit complementary H-P reciprocal square root of grain size dependencies. An additional increase in strength level is predicted for transition from a pileup to a single dislocation loop expanding against the grain boundary obstacle. In opposition, disordered grain boundaries are responsible for a reduced H-P stress intensity, k(epsilon). And at the limiting high stresses reached at lower-limiting nanoscale grain sizes, reversed H-P dependences are obtained both for the strength and strain rate sensitivity.