Abstract In recent years, the mechanical behavior of low-dimensional materials has been attracting lots of attention triggered both by the ongoing miniaturization and the extraordinary properties demonstrated for nanostructures. It is now well established that mechanical properties of small objects differ fundamentally from their bulk counterpart and in particular that “smaller is stronger” but many questions on the deformation mechanisms remain open. Most of the knowledge obtained on small- scale mechanics is based on ex-situ and in-situ characterizations using electron microscopy. However, these techniques suffer from the fact that imaging or scattering information is either limited to the surface or from a 2D projection of a thin foil of material. Within the last two decades tremendous progress was achieved at 3rd generation synchrotrons making it possible to focus hard X-ray beams down to the 100-nm scale. Modern synchrotron X-ray diffraction methods may thus provide structural information with good spatial resolution and fully 3D. In this review, we discuss the progress achieved on in-situ micro- and nano-mechanical tests coupled with different synchrotron X-ray diffraction techniques to monitor the elastic and plastic deformation, highlighting the advantages of these approaches, which offer at the same time versatile sample environments and extreme precision in displacement fields.

中文翻译：

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原位同步辐射X射线衍射对材料小尺度力学行为的研究进展

摘要 近年来，由于纳米结构的持续小型化和非凡的性能，低维材料的机械行为引起了广泛的关注。现在已经确定，小物体的机械性能与它们的大物体有着根本的不同，特别是“越小越强”，但关于变形机制的许多问题仍然悬而未决。大多数关于小尺度力学的知识都是基于使用电子显微镜进行的非原位和原位表征。然而，这些技术的缺点是成像或散射信息要么仅限于表面，要么来自材料薄箔的 2D 投影。在过去的 20 年里，第三代同步加速器取得了巨大的进步，使得将硬 X 射线束聚焦到 100 纳米尺度成为可能。因此，现代同步加速器 X 射线衍射方法可以提供具有良好空间分辨率和全 3D 的结构信息。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了原位微纳米力学测试与不同同步加速器 X 射线衍射技术在监测弹性和塑性变形方面取得的进展，强调了这些方法的优点，同时提供多种样品环境和位移领域的极端精度。