Twins are domain crystals inside their parent crystals, where they share some of the same crystal lattice points in a symmetrical manner. The formation and growth of twins result in substantial evolution of microstructures and properties in a large variety of metallic materials. Twin boundaries that separate two crystals effectively strengthen the material by impeding mobile dislocations, and increase the ductility and work-hardening capability of metallic materials. The articles in this issue of MRS Bulletin overview the synthesis and mechanical behavior of nanotwinned metallic materials, as well as plasticity dominated by mechanical twinning.

The remarkable properties of nanotwinned (NT) face-centered-cubic (fcc) metals arise directly from twin boundaries, the structures of which can be initially determined by growth twinning during the deposition process. Understanding the synthesis process and its relation to the resulting microstructure, and ultimately to material properties, is key to understanding and utilizing these materials. This article presents recent studies on electrodeposition and sputtering methods that produce a high density of nanoscale growth twins in fcc metals. Nanoscale growth twins tend to form spontaneously in monolithic and alloyed fcc metals with lower stacking-fault energies, while engineered approaches are necessary for fcc metals with higher stacking-fault energies. Growth defects and other microstructural features that influence nanotwin behavior and stability are introduced here, and future challenges in fabricating NT materials are highlighted.

Nanotwins require little energy to form in metals, but their impact on strength and ductility is dramatic. New mechanisms of strengthening, strain hardening, ductility, and strain-rate sensitivity have been observed in nanowires, films, and bulk materials containing nanoscale twins as the twin-boundary spacing decreases. These mechanisms can act in concert to produce interface-dominated nanomaterials with extreme tensile strength and plastic deformation without breaking. This article reviews recent theoretical and experimental understanding of the physical mechanisms of plasticity in nanotwin-strengthened metals, with a particular focus on the fundamental roles of coherent, incoherent, and defective twin boundaries in plastic deformation of bulk and small-scale cubic systems, and discusses new experimental methods for controlling these deformation mechanisms in nanotwinned metals and alloys.

As a relatively new class of hierarchically structured materials, nanotwinned (NT) metals exhibit an exceptional combination of high strength, good ductility, large fracture toughness, remarkable fatigue resistance, and creep stability. This article reviews current studies on fracture, fatigue, and creep of NT metals, with an emphasis on the fundamental deformation and failure mechanisms. We focus on the complex interactions among cracks, dislocations, and twin boundaries, the influence of microstructure, twin size, and twinning/detwinning on damage evolution, and the contribution of nanoscale twins to fatigue and creep under indentation and irradiation conditions. The article also includes critical discussions on the effects of twin thickness and grain size on the fracture toughness, fatigue resistance, and creep stability of NT metals.

This article focuses on in situ transmission electron microscope (TEM) characterization to explore twins in face-centered-cubic and body-centered-cubic monolithic metals, and their impact on the overall mechanical performance. Taking advantage of simultaneous nanomechanical deformation and nanoscale imaging using versatile in situ TEM tools, direct correlation of these unique microscopic defects with macroscopic mechanical performance becomes possible. This article summarizes recent evidence to support the mechanisms related to strengthening and plasticity in metals, including nanotwinned Cu, Ni, Al, Au, and others in bulk, thin film, and nanowire forms.

Due to the scarcity of “easy slip” systems in hexagonal materials with a hexagonal close-packed structure (hcp), deformation twinning plays a crucial role in determining mechanical properties and texture evolution. In this article, we highlight the current understanding of mechanisms and mechanics of the twinning system $\left\{ {10\bar 12} \right\}\left\langle {10\bar 1\bar 1} \right\rangle $, which is commonly activated in all hexagonal materials for nucleation and propagation of deformation twins, twin–twin interactions, solute segregation at twin boundaries, and the development of constitutive models that account for the fundamental mechanisms of twinning/detwinning. Future directions such as characterizing the three-dimensional shapes of twins, the influence of solute atoms on twin propagation, and the influence of twin–twin junctions on mechanical properties of the hexagonal materials are discussed.

The twinning-induced plasticity effect enables designing austenitic Fe-Mn-C-based steels with >70% elongation with an ultimate tensile strength >1 GPa. These steels are characterized by high strain hardening due to the formation of twins and complex dislocation substructures that dynamically reduce the dislocation mean free path. Both mechanisms are governed by the stacking-fault energy (SFE) that depends on composition. This connection between composition and substructure renders these steels ideal model materials for theory-based alloy design: Ab initio-guided composition adjustment is used to tune the SFE, and thus, the strain-hardening behavior for promoting the onset of twinning at intermediate deformation levels where the strain-hardening capacity provided by the dislocation substructure is exhausted. We present thermodynamic simulations and their use in constitutive models, as well as electron microscopy and combinatorial methods that enable validation of the strain-hardening mechanisms.

The US Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) has emphasized the need to accelerate the discovery and development of materials to maintain industry competitiveness in new and existing markets. While largely interpreted as an initiative arising from the materials community, it is important to address the coupling of materials with manufacturing and all other relevant aspects of product development in order to maximize its impact. The dual thrusts of Integrated Computational Materials Engineering and the MGI represent a long-term vision of industry, academic, and government stakeholders. The goal is to build a new kind of coupled experimental, computational, and data sciences infrastructure. The emphasis is on high-throughput methods to accelerate historical sequential processes of serendipitous materials discovery and largely empirical materials development by leveraging computation and modern data sciences and analytics. The notion of a materials innovation ecosystem is introduced as the framework in which to pursue acceleration of discovery and development of materials consisting of various elements of data sciences, design optimization, manufacturing scale-up and automation, multiscale modeling, and uncertainty quantification with verification and validation.