Microdeformation in materials

The nondeterministic deformation behavior of sub-micrometer size objects is fundamentally different from the deterministic characteristics of macroscopic materials.

A surprising discovery in the last few years is that the deformation properties of sub-micron objects are fundamentally different from those of macroscopic materials. Deformation occurs in the form of non-deterministic random avalanches. In order to use such sub-micrometer parts as structural materials, the statistical properties of this stochastic process are revealed.