This article presents a fast and highly efficient algorithm developed to reconstruct a three-dimensional (3D) volume with a high spatial precision from a set of field ion microscopy (FIM) images, and specific tools developed to characterize crystallographic lattice and defects. A set of FIM digital images and image processing algorithms allow the construction of a 3D reconstruction of the sample at the atomic scale. The capability of the 3D FIM to resolve the crystallographic lattice and the finest defects in metals opens a new way to analyze materials. This spatial precision was quantified on tungsten, analyzed at different analyzing conditions. A specific data mining tool, based on Fourier transforms, was also developed to characterize lattice distortions in the reconstructed volumes. This tool has been used in simulated and experimental volumes to successfully locate and characterize defects such as dislocations and grain boundaries.

The aim of the present research is to investigate the development of left and right dislocation in child French through a corpus study of three children until age 2;7 from the corpus of Lyon (Demuth & Tremblay, 2008). We extracted a total of 704 dislocations and analysed their syntactic properties. We show that (i) right dislocations are more frequent than left dislocations and (ii) left dislocations are significantly more complete than right dislocations (fewer omissions of verbs or pronouns). We compare these results to the hypothesis of Freudenthal, Pine, Jones & Gobet (2015, 2016) according to which some properties of child language can be explained by a learning mechanism from the right edge of the sentences from the input. We will show that this hypothesis can explain the general trend found in our data, but it is not sufficient to account for the entire development of dislocation in French.

Nanocrystalline metals possess high strength and outstanding resistance to irradiation damage. However, the high-density grain boundaries in nanocrystalline metals lead to low plasticity and poor thermal stability. In recent years, interface engineering has gradually become an important way to improve the comprehensive properties of nanocrystalline metals. In this paper, the interface structure, deformation mechanism, and physical properties of Cu–Nb nanolayered composites fabricated by physical vapor deposition and accumulative roll bonding are reviewed. Both Cu–Nb nanolayered composites possess semi-coherent interfaces. The nanolayered composites could achieve excellent resistance to irradiation damage since the interfaces are good sinks for the irradiation point defects. In addition, nanolayered metallic composites with abundant heterogeneous interfaces have better thermal stability compared to nanocrystalline metallic materials. Moreover, the interactions between dislocations and interfaces can be adjusted effectively through controlling the atomistic interface structure and alignment of slip systems across the interface, so as to achieve high strength and high plastic deformation ability simultaneously.

The plasticity of body-centered cubic (bcc) metals is dependent of temperature as well as sample dimension at the micrometer scale, but the effects of cryogenic temperature on the plasticity and the related failure process in micron-sized bcc metals have not been studied under uniaxial tension. In this work, we utilized in situ cryogenic micro-tensile tests, transmission electron microscopy, and dislocation dynamic simulations to examine the plasticity and failure processes of [001]-oriented bcc niobium micropillars. Our study reveals that a strong suppression of cross-slip at low temperatures prevents dislocation multiplication and leads to a dislocation starvation state, at which no mobile dislocation exists due to the rapid annihilation of dislocations at free surfaces. New dislocations are then nucleated until stress concentration at a slip step creates a micro-crack, the propagation of which leads to catastrophic failure. This unique failure process results from the combined effects of sample dimension and temperature.

This article examines the Finnish tail construction (right dislocation) used as a first mention of a referent and the variation of the demonstrative pronouns tämä ‘this’, tuo ‘that’, and se ‘it’ in the construction. Many previous studies have suggested that tail construction (TC) referents are highly active and thus already mentioned and salient in a conversation. However, in Finnish, the TC may introduce new referents into a conversation, and this article provides an empirical analysis of how and why this is done. First-mention TCs are often evaluations or questions in which the proposition links the utterance to the preceding context. When presenting new information, the TC allows the speaker to present a potentially lengthy lexical definition of a new referent at the end of the utterance, avoiding the additional emphatic meanings or unwanted implications a simply inverted word order might create.

Atomistic simulations of 18 silicon 〈110〉 symmetric tilt grain boundaries are performed using Stillinger Weber, Tersoff, and the optimized Modified Embedded Atom Method potentials. We define a novel structural unit classification through dislocation core analysis to characterize the relaxed GB structures. GBs with the misorientation angle θ ranging from 13.44° to 70.53° are solely composed of Lomer dislocation cores. For GBs with θ less than but close to 70.53°, GB ‘step’ appears and the equilibrated states with lowest GB energies can be attained only when such GB ‘step’ is located in the middle of each single periodic GB structure. For the misorientation angles in the range of 93.37° ≤ θ ≤ 148.41°, GB structures become complicated since they contain multiple types of dislocation cores. This work not only facilitates the structural characterization of silicon 〈110〉 STGBs, but also may provide new insights into mirco-structure design in multicrystalline silicon.

A mechanical model is developed to explain the influence of grain rotation on nanovoid growth in nanocrystalline solids in the current paper. In the framework of the mechanical model, the dislocations released from the nanovoid surface will be affected by four stresses: the driving stress induced by far-field stress, the stress arising from grain rotation, the image stress caused by the free surface of the nanovoid, and the back stress generated by the previously emitted dislocations. Furthermore, under the condition of different rotational strength and surface effects, we analyzed in detail the influence of the important parameters such as nanovoid radius, nucleation radius, dislocation emission angle, relative distance, rotation grain size, rotation coefficient, and direction angle on the critical stress. Finally, we discuss the effect of the coupling of rotational deformation and the grain boundary on the growth of the nanovoid. As a conclusion, the high stress nearby the nanovoid can be released by grain rotation, which inhibits the growth of the nanovoid.

Efficiency potential of crystalline Si solar cells is analyzed by considering external radiative efficiency (ERE), voltage, and fill factor losses. Crystalline Si solar cells have an efficiency potential of more than 28.5% by realizing ERE of 20% from about 5% and normalized resistance of less than 0.05 from around 0.1. Nonradiative recombination losses in single-crystalline and multicrystalline Si solar cells are also discussed. Especially, nonrecombination and resistance losses in multicrystalline Si solar cells are shown to be higher than those of single-crystalline cells. Importance of further improvement of minority-carrier lifetime in crystalline Si solar cells is suggested for further improvement of crystalline Si solar cells. High efficiency of more than 28.5% will be realized by realizing high minority-carrier lifetime of more than 30 ms. Key issues for those ends are reduction in carbon concentration of less than 1 × 1014 cm−3, oxygen precipitated and dislocations even in single-crystalline Si solar cells, and reduction in dislocation density of less than 3 × 103 cm−2 in multicrystalline Si solar cells.

The plastic deformation mechanisms and the microstructure development during creep deformation of L12-hardened Co-base superalloys show a number of unique features. The preferred orientation of rafting is determined by their positive lattice mismatch. In addition, the regular interfacial dislocation networks often found in rafted specimens of other types of superalloys do not form. While the ordered γ′-L12 precipitates are supposed to harden the material, they are actually found to be frequently cut by partial dislocations generating stacking faults. In this work, specimens from creep tests interrupted at different strains were investigated using transmission and scanning electron microscopy. By this, it is possible to find out which of these processes take place in which stage of creep deformation. For a better understanding of creep deformation, the balance between γ′ cutting and dislocation activity within the matrix channels is of special interest.

The traditional macro-scale form of dynamic indentation measures the dynamic deformation behavior of a material by simulating impact conditions. Similarly, the nano-impact indentation technique, with small-scale contacts and high spatial resolutions, is a novel technique for obtaining mechanical properties of materials at dynamic strain rates (>102 s−1). Nano-impact hardness values display a decreasing trend or size effect that continues for several micrometers of indentation depth, compared to the primarily sub micrometer depth range of size effect in quasi-static nanoindentations. For the first time, the factors behind the enhanced size effects for dynamic micro-scale indentations have been investigated by the current work: non-uniform loading and resulting instability using strain rate profiles, plastic wave behavior during loading using resistance force versus indentation depth profiles, quantification of energy of the dynamic plastic wave, and localization of impact strain using electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) mapping of the strain affected vicinity of indentation imprints.