Justin Yutong Cheng¹, Kevin Baldwin², Youxing Chen³, Nan Li², Irene Jane Beyerlein⁴, Nathan Allan Mara¹; ¹University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, ²Los Alamos National Laboratory, ³University of North Carolina, Charlotte, ⁴University of California, Santa Barbara

Nanoscale metallic multilayers (NMMs) are layered composites that are ideal for exploring the role of interfacial structure on deformation behavior. Most NMMs studied so far have been synthesized with atomically sharp, or 2D interfaces. In contrast, this work focuses on interfaces that are structurally graded in the out-of-interface plane direction. These “3D interfaces” influence the hardness and deformability of materials in ways that are not yet well quantified. We show that 3D interface-containing Cu/Nb NMMs display distinct anisotropy in mechanical response at single-phase layer thicknesses of