Atomistic simulation of dislocation emission in nanosized grain boundaries

The present work deals with the atomic mechanism responsible for the emission of partial dislocations from grain boundaries (GB) in nanocrystalline metals. It is shown that, in a 12 nm grain-size sample, GBs containing grain-boundary dislocations (GBDs) can emit a partial dislocation during deformation by local atomic shuffling and stress-assisted free-volume migration. As in previous work, the nucleation occurs at a GBD, which, upon nucleation and propagation, is removed. In the present case, free-volume migration occurs away from the nucleation region both before and after the nucleation event.