The Use of Laue Microdiffraction to Study Small-scale Plasticity

Micromechanics is a booming research area experiencing the development of new advanced testing methods at small dimensions A relatively young but very popular technique involves uniaxial compressing micrometer and sub-micrometer sized objects, usually in the shape of pillars Research in this field has focused mainly on exploring size effects in single crystal metals This article demonstrates that Laue microdiffraction allows exploring in-situ the evolving microstructure in the tran salon regime from elasticity to plasticity a feature that is not accessible with other techniques but which is essential for the understanding of small scale plasticity