Influence of test temperature on the size effect in molybdenum small-scale compression pillars

Previous research has shown that body-centred cubic (bcc) metals exhibit a smaller size dependence of strength than what is commonly observed in face-centred cubic (fcc) metals. This work investigates compression testing of focused ion beam-manufactured molybdenum pillars ranging in size from 300 nm to 5 μm, both above and below its critical temperature at 300 and 500 K. At 500 K the size effect is found to be consistent with what is observed in fcc metals, owing to the increased mobility of screw dislocations.