Near-ideal strength in gold nanowires achieved through microstructural design

icrostructural design has been exploited for some time to en-hance the strength of crystalline materials, mostly through work-hardening to increase the initial density of disloca-tions,1 or grain size refinement in the micro-crystalline and nanocrystalline regimes fol-lowing the classical HallPetch relation.2,3 More recently, it was also observed that bulk specimens of ultrafine-grained and nanocrystalline Cu possess much higher yield strength when coherent twin bound-aries (CTBs) are introduced during electro-chemical deposition.46 Crystalline materi-als, however, cannot be strengthene