Deformation-mediated phase transformation in gold nano-junction

To further advance our understanding of the mechanical behavior of nano-sized crystals, it is important to visualize the deformation process in the real material system. In this work, body-centered-tetragonal (BCT) lattice was observed during in-situ tension of gold nano-junction in a transmission electron microscope, which is well explained by the proposed deformation mechanism. In contrast to the well-known Bain model, the phase transformation can be realized by a progressively slipping process with a vector of 1/12 < 112 >. The lattice constant a can be accurately predicated from a hard-sphere model and c is about 5% larger than that in MD simulations using a more realistic interatomic potential. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.