Advances in Multi-Scale Mechanical Characterization

The nanoscale mechanical properties of low-dimensional, innovative engineering and electronic materials, smart materials, biomaterials, hierarchically architectured systems, and miniaturized devices are quite interesting due to their extraordinary and scale-dependent behavior. As evident from the significant increase in the number of publications every year over the last two decades, the research community showed tremendous interest in advancing the small-scale mechanical testing instrumentation and employed them for probing the local mechanical and functional properties of advanced materials and devices. It is imperative because the reliability and performance of the advanced and intricate devices in various fields requires in-depth knowledge about their properties and their sensitivity to different service conditions; these are possible only by applying the advanced in-situ experimental techniques and/or simulation methods at small length scales. These understandings, obtained through experiments, computations, theory, and simulations with empirical-based atomistic methods, have led to the fabrication of new structures with tunable properties, thus achieving the aimed applications. Since this field is rapidly developing, an update on the new innovations advancing instrumentation, new theoretical models, and methods for improving the current understanding, and applications would be helpful for the researchers working in these areas. This Special Topic welcomes such high-quality contributions that provide deep insights into the mechanisms responsible for the scale-dependent mechanical behavior of advanced materials and their applications in solving complex challenges.