Deformation patterns in cross-sections of twisted bamboo-structured Au microwires

In order to investigate an almost pure extrinsic size effect we propose an experimental approach to investigate the deformation structure within single crystalline cross-sections of twisted bamboo-structured Au microwires. The cross-sections of individual 〈1 0 0〉 oriented grains of 25 μm thick Au microwires have been characterized by Laue microdiffraction. The diffraction data were used to calculate the misorientation of each data point with respect to the neutral fiber in the center of the cross-section as well as the kernel average misorientation to map the global and local deformation structure as function of the imposed maximum plastic shear strain. The study is accompanied by crystal plasticity simulations which yield the equivalent plastic strain distributions in the cross-section of the wire. The global deformation structures are directly related to the activated slip systems, resulting from the real orientations of the investigated grains. When averaging the degree of deformation along ring segments, an almost continuous but non-linear increase of misorientation from the center toward the surface is observed, reflecting the overall strain gradient imposed by torsion. For the local deformation structure, pronounced and graded deformation traces are observed which often pass over the neutral fiber of the twisted wire and which are obviously reflecting domains of high geometrically necessary dislocations content.