Origins of Folding Instabilities on Polycrystalline Metal Surfaces

Mechanical wear and tear is a fact of life as old as tools themselves, yet is still not fully understood. Here large-scale atomistic simulations combined with atomic force microscopy provide a deep microscopic understanding of unconstrained surface plastic flow in polycrystalline metals. These findings suggest that engineering crystallographic surface texture to avoid formation of folds is a way forward in designing wear-resistant metal surfaces.