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When nanocrystalline materials are placed under a mechanical load, they may deform in unexpected ways. Gaining detailed microscopic understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the deformation can be difficult. In his Perspective, Ovid'ko highlights the report by Murayama et al., who provide atomic-level evidence for a rotational deformation mechanism in nanocrystalline materials.
The author is at the Institute of Problems of Mechanical Engineering, Russian Academy of Sciences, Bolshoj 61, Vas. Ostrov, St. Petersburg 199178, Russia. E-mail: ovidko{at}def.ipme.ru
