An insight into the role of the grain boundary in plastic deformation by means of a bicrystalline pillar compression test and atomistic simulation

A combination of experimental and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations is used to investigate the interaction of dislocations with a selected grain boundary (GB) in bicrystalline pillars (BCPs) with component crystals oriented for single slip and multiple slip. As a reference, single-crystalline pillars with the same orientations are also tested and compared with the BCPs. Orientations identical to the experiments are used to generate models in MD simulations. Further, electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) measurements on the cross-section of the pillars are performed to investigate the crystal lattice rotation in correlation with the excess dislocation density. A clear change in mechanical behavior of the BCP was observed when the size of the component crystals reduced below 1μm. The EBSD analyses of these small BCPs showed an increase in the misorientation in the vicinity of the GB. MD simulation provided atomistic insights into the dislocation nucleation process and the BCPs’ interaction with the GB. On the basis of these observations, it is concluded that in BCPs smaller than 1μm the dislocation–GB interaction plays a more crucial role than the dislocation–dislocation interaction.