Fig. 3: Local plastic strain progression and microstructural evolution.

a, b Evolution of local plastic strain and structure with increasing strain for pillars forming confined slip band and extended slip band, respectively. The structure is depicted as follows: green color represents the fcc structure, yellow denotes TB, blue indicates SF, and red represents the hcp phase. c Statistical distributions of local strain for pillars compressed at 25% strain. d The corresponding atomic fraction of TB, SF, hcp phase. The category of ‘all hcp atoms’ summarizes all three types of planar defects. c, d The atomic strain and structure type are analyzed for the entire deformed system, which consists of 14 million atoms.