Plasticity in nanotwinned polycrystalline Ni nanowires under uniaxial compression

Molecular dynamic simulation (MD) was used to study the compression behavior of nanotwinned polycrystalline Ni nanowires (NWs). An inverse Hall-Petch (HP) relation as a function of twin boundary spacing (TBS) is observed, which can be mainly understood in terms of a transition of the dominant intra-granular deformation mechanism. Through the simulations, we provide an atomic scale view of the entire process of compression deformation.