Nanoscale Intergranular Films Shed Light On Grain Boundary Behaviour

Materials scientists have long recognised that grain boundaries and interfaces can limit a material's bulk properties, especially at high temperatures. Significant research effort has gone into understanding their nature with an eye to engineering them to minimise deleterious affects. And, with the advent of tools capable of characterising materials of the nanoscale range, direct observation of interface phenomena a has become possible. Technion-Israel Inst of Technology researchers, Mor Baram along with ACerS members Dominique Chatain (CNRS, France) and Wayne Kaplan, shed some new light on interfaces with a study of nanoscale inter-granular films also published in Science (doi: 10.1126/science.1201596).