Nanoscale gold pillars strengthened through dislocation starvation

It has been known for more than half a century that crystals can be made stronger by introducing defects into them, i.e., by strain-hardening. As the number of defects increases, their movement and multiplication is impeded, thus strengthening the material. In the present work we show hardening by dislocation starvation, a fundamentally different strengthening mechanism based on the elimination of defects from the crystal. We demonstrate that submicrometer sized gold crystals can be 50 times stronger than their bulk counterparts due to the elimination of defects from the crystal in the course of deformation.