Recently a paper on "Superplasticity in intermetallic NiAl nanowires via atomistic simulations" has been published in Materials Letters, Volume 64, Issue 7, 15 April 2010, Pages 879-881 by Vijay Kumar Sutrakar and D Roy Mahapatra. The abstract of the paper is given below: Abstract A novel superplastic deformation in an intermetallic B2-NiAl nanowire of cross-sectional dimensions of Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ScienceDirect® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V. 
20 Å with failure strain as high as 700% at 700 K temperature is reported. The minimum temperature under which the superplasticity has been observed is around 0.36 Tm, which is much lower than 0.5 Tm (Tm = melting temperature i.e. 1911 K for bulk B2-NiAl). Superplasticity is observed due to transformation from crystalline phase to amorphous phase after yielding of the nanowire.
Recently a paper titled as "Asymmetry
in Structural and Thermo-Mechanical behavior of Intermetallic Ni-Al
Nanowire under Tensile/Compressive Loading: A Molecular Dynamics Study" has been published in Intermetallics by Vijay Kumar Sutrakar and D Roy Mahapatra.
The Abstract of the paper is given below.
Abstract:
The asymmetric stress–strain behavior under tension/compression in an initial
100
B2-NiAl nanowire is investigated considering two different surface configurations i.e., 
100
/(0 1 0) (0 0 1) and 
100
/(0
100
0.30.
−0.12.
1 1) (0 −1 1). This behavior is attributed to two different deformation
mechanisms namely a slip dominated deformation under compression and a known twinning dominated deformation under tension. It is also shown
that B2 → BCT (body-centered-tetragonal) phase transformation under
tensile loading is independent of the surface configurations for an
initial
oriented NiAl nanowire. Under tensile loading, the nanowire undergoes a
stress-induced martensitic phase transformation from an initial B2
phase to BCT phase via twinning along {110} plane with failure strain
of
On the other hand, a compressive loading causes failure of these
nanowires via brittle fracture after compressive yielding, with a
maximum failure strain of
Such brittle fracture under compressive loading occurs via slip along
{110} plane without any phase transformations. Softening/hardening
behavior is also reported for the first time in these nanowires under tensile/compressive loadings, which cause asymmetry in their yield
strength behavior in the stress–strain space. Result shows that a sharp
increase in energy with increasing strain under compressive loading
causes hardening of the nanowire, and hence, gives improved yield
strength as compared to tensile loading.
Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ScienceDirect® is a registered trademark of Elsevier B.V.