Insights into Grain-Boundary Motion through Coupling of In-Situ Electron Microscopy and Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Mark Asta
University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley)

In this talk we will describe the results of molecular-dynamics simulations examining processes related to the shrinking of island grains in Au thin films. The island grains investigated in this work are bounded by<110> tilt
grain boundaries with 90 degree misorientations, but varying grainboundary inclinations. Our interest in this system is motivated by parallel experimental investigations of the dynamics of the same type of island grains in mazed-bicrystal thin films, using in-situ electron-microscopy. We focus in this talk on analyses of the simulation results designed to probe the magnitudes of the grain-boundary stiffnesses and mobilities underlying the rate of grain shrinkage derived in the simulations. In addition, we analyze the variations in these properties with grain-boundary inclination, and discuss the relationship between these anisotropies and the dynamic shape of the island grains. Comparison with experimental observations obtained by in-situ microscopy will also be presented.


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