The three-dimensional nature of twins, especially the atomic structures and motion mechanisms of the boundary lateral to the shear direction of the twin, has never been characterized at the atomic level, because such boundary is, in principle, crystallographically unobservable. We thus refer to it here as the dark side of the twin. Here, using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and atomistic simulations, we characterize the dark side of deformation twins in magnesium. It is found that the dark side is serrated and comprised of coherent twin boundaries and semi-coherent twist prismatic–prismatic boundaries that control twin growth. The conclusions of this work apply to the same twin mode in other hexagonal close-packed materials, and the conceptual ideas discussed here should hold for all twin modes in crystalline materials.

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Recent studies show that immiscible metallic multilayers with incoherent interfaces can effectively reduce defect density in ion irradiated metals by providing active defect sinks that capture and annihilate radiation induced defect clusters. Although it is anticipated that defect density within the layers should vary as a function of distance to the layer interface, there is, to date, little in situ TEM evidence to validate this hypothesis. In this study monolithic Cu films and Cu/Fe multilayers with individual layer thickness, h, of 100 and 5 nm were subjected to in situ Cu ion irradiation at room temperature to nominally 1 displacement-per-atom inside a transmission electron microscope. Rapid formation and propagation of defect clusters were observed in monolithic Cu, whereas fewer defects with smaller dimensions were generated in Cu/Fe multilayers with smaller h. Furthermore in situ video shows that the cumulative defect

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