There appear to be two principal limitations in characterizing and mechanically testing materials with novel nanoscale multiphase microstructures. The first is the inability to produce them in bulk quantities and the second is the inability to perform in situ tests at high enough magnifications to track local changes in microstructure during deformation.

In this letter, we present (i) a novel approach to create free-standing thin films of nanoscale multiphase microstructures, (ii) a pathway that enables this microstructure to be changed and (iii) results of in situ testing such microstructures in the TEM.

This article was originally published in Scripta Materialia (2011) 64(7), 629-632.

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