Fig. 3: Crystalline-to-amorphous phase transformation revealed in an in-situ TEM compression experiment.

Snapshot images of the in-situ TEM compression video with identical magnification, in which (a) is before loading, (b) is after unloading. c HRTEM image of the enlarged rectangle region in (b). d Load-displacement curve of the in-situ TEM compression experiment. e, f SAED patterns of the undeformed and deformed materials, respectively, probed from yellow dashed circle region and blue dashed circle region in (b). The red dashed line and red solid line denote the positions of amorphous halo rings for the materials without and with plastic deformation, respectively. The scale bars on the bottom left denote 10 nm⁻¹.