Decoupling shear from grain boundary migration
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Access through your institution Buy or subscribe The mechanisms of GB-mediated deformation, however, remain largely elusive owing to the structural complexities of GBs and the challenges in tracking the motion of a single GB at the atomic scale. Among different GB-mediated deformations, GB migration is suggested to most efficiently accommodate deformation, and is believed to be coupled with shear stress, a process called shear-coupled GB migration. Now, Romain Gautier and colleagues quantify the relationship between GB migration and shear strain experimentally in ultrafine-grained aluminium and show that the shear strain is low and not directly or intrinsically linked to the GB misorientation (Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09800-7; 2025).Gautier and colleagues use ultrafine-grained (grain size <1 μm) aluminium samples and remove the dislocations within grains by annealing. By performing tensile tests in a transmission electron microscope at about 210–230 °C, isolated GB migration with shear strain is quantified using digital image correlation. The coupling factor for the shear-coupled GB migration mechanism, defined as the ratio of the velocities of GB lateral translation and migration, can be determined by the ratio of the shear displacement and the associated migrating distance. These displacements are obtained from tracking the relative motion of surface markers (small white squares in picture) with respect to fixed reference points (large white square in picture). This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access options Access through your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription $32.99 / 30 days cancel any time Learn more Subscribe to this journal Receive 12 print issues and online access $259.00 per year only $21.58 per issue Learn more Rent or buy this article Prices vary by article type from$1.95 to$39.95 Learn more Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout Author informationAuthors and AffiliationsNature Materials https://www.nature.com/nmat/Xin LiAuthorsXin LiView author publicationsSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarCorresponding authorCorrespondence to Xin Li.Rights and permissionsReprints and permissionsAbout this articleCite this articleLi, X. Decoupling shear from grain boundary migration. Nat. Mater. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02457-7Download citationPublished: 17 December 2025Version of record: 17 December 2025DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-025-02457-7Share this articleAnyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:Get shareable linkSorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.Copy shareable link to clipboard Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Quantifying grain boundary deformation mechanisms in small-grained metals Romain GautierFrédéric MompiouMarc Legros Nature Article 10 Dec 2025