ABSTRACT
The ability to create nanophase materials, as discussed in earlier chapters, has developed rapidly over the past decade. This development has resulted in a new class of materials that, in contrast to conventional solids, have an appreciable fraction of their atoms residing in defect environments. For example, a nanophase material with a readily achievable average grain size of 5 nm has about 50% of its atoms within the first two nearest-neighbor planes of a grain boundary, in which significant atomic displacements from their normal lattice positions are exhibited. Since the properties of nanophase materials are so strongly related to their unique structures, this chapter will attempt to review what we know about the atomic scale structures of nanophase materials after almost a decade of research.
