Influence of test temperature on the size effect in molybdenum small-scale compression pillars

Previous research has shown that body-centred cubic (bcc) metals exhibit a smaller size dependence of strength than what is commonly observed in face-centred cubic (fcc) metals. This work investigates compression testing of focused ion beam-manufactured molybdenum pillars ranging in size from 300nm to 5m, both above and below its critical temperature at 300 and 500K. At 500K the size effect is found to be consistent with what is observed in fcc metals, owing to the increased mobility of screw dislocations.