Alternating starvation of dislocations during plastic yielding in metallic nanowires

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the mechanical deformation behaviors of single-crystalline nickel nanowires are quite different from their bulk counterparts. Correlation between the obtained stress–strain curves and the visualized defect evolution during deformation processes clearly demonstrates that a sequence of complex dislocation slip events results in a state of dislocation starvation, involving the nucleation and propagation of dislocations until they finally escape from the wires, so that the wires deform elastically until new dislocations are generated.