Crystallites are small, often microscopic crystal

Crystal

A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...

s that, held together through highly defective boundaries

Grain boundary

A grain boundary is the interface between two grains, or crystallites, in a polycrystalline material. Grain boundaries are defects in the crystal structure, and tend to decrease the electrical and thermal conductivity of the material...

, constitute a polycrystalline solid. Metallurgists

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...

 often refer to crystallites as grains.

Details

Crystallite size is usually measured from X-ray diffraction patterns and grain size by other experimental techniques like transmission electron microscopy. Solid objects that are large enough to see and handle are rarely composed of a single crystal

Single crystal

A single crystal or monocrystalline solid is a material in which the crystal lattice of the entire sample is continuous and unbroken to the edges of the sample, with no grain boundaries...

, except for a few cases (gems

Gemstone

A gemstone or gem is a piece of mineral, which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments...

, silicon single crystals

Monocrystalline silicon

Monocrystalline silicon or single-crystal Si, or mono-Si is the base material of the electronic industry. It consists of silicon in which the crystal lattice of the entire solid is continuous, unbroken to its edges. It can be prepared intrinsic, i.e...

 for the electronics industry, certain types of fiber

Fiber

Fiber is a class of materials that are continuous filaments or are in discrete elongated pieces, similar to lengths of thread.They are very important in the biology of both plants and animals, for holding tissues together....

, single crystals of a nickel

Nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the transition metals and is hard and ductile...

-based superalloy for turbojet engines, and some ice crystals which can exceed 0.5 meters in diameter). Most materials are polycrystalline

Polycrystalline

Polycrystalline materials are solids that are composed of many crystallites of varying size and orientation. The variation in direction can be random or directed, possibly due to growth and processing conditions. Fiber texture is an example of the latter.Almost all common metals, and many ceramics...

; they are made of a large number of single crystals — crystallites — held together by thin layers of amorphous solid

Amorphous solid

In condensed matter physics, an amorphous or non-crystalline solid is a solid that lacks the long-range order characteristic of a crystal....

. The crystallite size can vary from a few nanometers to several millimeters.

If the individual crystallites are oriented randomly (that is, if they lack texture

Texture (crystalline)

In materials science, texture is the distribution of crystallographic orientations of a polycrystalline sample. A sample in which these orientations are fully random is said to have no texture. If the crystallographic orientations are not random, but have some preferred orientation, then the...

), a large enough volume of polycrystalline material will be approximately isotropic. This property helps the simplifying assumptions of continuum mechanics

Continuum mechanics

Continuum mechanics is a branch of mechanics that deals with the analysis of the kinematics and the mechanical behavior of materials modelled as a continuous mass rather than as discrete particles...

 to apply to real-world solids. However, most manufactured materials have some alignment to their crystallites, which must be taken into account for accurate predictions of their behavior and characteristics.

Material fracture

Fracture

A fracture is the separation of an object or material into two, or more, pieces under the action of stress.The word fracture is often applied to bones of living creatures , or to crystals or crystalline materials, such as gemstones or metal...

s can be intergranular fracture

Intergranular fracture

An intergranular fracture is a fracture that follows the grains of the material. If the material has multiple lattice organizations, when one lattice ends and another begins, the fracture changes direction to follow the new grain. This results in a fairly jagged looking fracture with bumpy...

 or a transgranular fracture

Transgranular fracture

A Transgranular fracture is a fracture that follows the edges of lattices in a granular material, ignoring the grains in the individual lattices...

. There is an ambiguity with powder grains: a powder grain can be made of several crystallites. Thus, the (powder) "grain size" found by laser granulometry can be different from the "grain size" (or, rather, crystallite size) found by X-ray diffraction

X-ray crystallography

X-ray crystallography is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and causes the beam of light to spread into many specific directions. From the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a...

 (e.g. Scherrer

Shape factor (X-ray diffraction)

A shape factor is used in x-ray diffraction and crystallography to correlate the size of sub-micrometre particles, or crystallites, in a solid to the broadening of a peak in a diffraction pattern...

 method), by optical microscopy

Microscopy

Microscopy is the technical field of using microscopes to view samples and objects that cannot be seen with the unaided eye...

 under polarised light, or by scanning electron microscopy

Scanning electron microscope

A scanning electron microscope is a type of electron microscope that images a sample by scanning it with a high-energy beam of electrons in a raster scan pattern...

 (backscattered electrons).

Coarse grained rocks are formed very slowly, while fine grained rocks are formed quickly, on geological time scales. If a rock forms very quickly, such as the solidification of lava

Lava

Lava refers both to molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption and the resulting rock after solidification and cooling. This molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at...

 ejected from a volcano

Volcano

2. Bedrock3. Conduit 4. Base5. Sill6. Dike7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano8. Flank| 9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano10. Throat11. Parasitic cone12. Lava flow13. Vent14. Crater15...

, there may be no crystals at all. This is how obsidian

Obsidian

Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth...

 forms.

Grain boundaries

Grain boundaries are interfaces where crystals of different orientations meet. A grain boundary is a single-phase interface, with crystals on each side of the boundary being identical except in orientation. The term "crystallite boundary" is sometimes, though rarely, used. Grain boundary areas contain those atoms that have been perturbed from their original lattice sites, dislocations, and impurities that have migrated to the lower energy grain boundary.

Treating a grain boundary geometrically as an interface of a single crystal cut into two parts, one of which is rotated, we see that there are five variables required to define a grain boundary. The first two numbers come from the unit vector that specifies a rotation axis. The third number designates the angle of rotation of the grain. The final two numbers specify the plane of the grain boundary (or a unit vector that is normal to this plane).

Grain boundaries disrupt the motion of dislocations through a material. Dislocation propagation is impeded because of the stress field of the grain boundary defect region and the lack of slip planes and slip directions and overall alignment across the boundaries. Reducing grain size is therefore a common way to improve strength

Strength of materials

In materials science, the strength of a material is its ability to withstand an applied stress without failure. The applied stress may be tensile, compressive, or shear. Strength of materials is a subject which deals with loads, deformations and the forces acting on a material. A load applied to a...

, often without any sacrifice in toughness

Toughness

In materials science and metallurgy, toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing; Material toughness is defined as the amount of energy per volume that a material can absorb before rupturing...

 because the smaller grains create more obstacles per unit area of slip plane. This crystallite size-strength relationship is given by the Hall-Petch relationship

Grain boundary strengthening

Grain-boundary strengthening is a method of strengthening materials by changing their average crystallite size...

. The high interfacial energy

Surface energy

Surface energy quantifies the disruption of intermolecular bonds that occur when a surface is created. In the physics of solids, surfaces must be intrinsically less energetically favorable than the bulk of a material, otherwise there would be a driving force for surfaces to be created, removing...

 and relatively weak bonding in grain boundaries makes them preferred sites for the onset of corrosion

Corrosion

Corrosion is the disintegration of an engineered material into its constituent atoms due to chemical reactions with its surroundings. In the most common use of the word, this means electrochemical oxidation of metals in reaction with an oxidant such as oxygen...

 and for the precipitation

Precipitation (chemistry)

Precipitation is the formation of a solid in a solution or inside anothersolid during a chemical reaction or by diffusion in a solid. When the reaction occurs in a liquid, the solid formed is called the precipitate, or when compacted by a centrifuge, a pellet. The liquid remaining above the solid...

 of new phases from the solid.

Grain boundary migration plays an important role in many of the mechanisms of creep

Creep (deformation)

In materials science, creep is the tendency of a solid material to slowly move or deform permanently under the influence of stresses. It occurs as a result of long term exposure to high levels of stress that are below the yield strength of the material....

. Grain boundary migration occurs when a shear stress acts on the grain boundary plane and causes the grains to slide. This means that fine-grained materials actually have a poor resistance to creep relative to coarser grains, especially at high temperatures, because smaller grains contain more atoms in grain boundary sites. Grain boundaries also cause deformation in that they are sources and sinks of point defects. Voids in a material tend to gather in a grain boundary, and if this happens to a critical extent, the material could fracture

Fracture

A fracture is the separation of an object or material into two, or more, pieces under the action of stress.The word fracture is often applied to bones of living creatures , or to crystals or crystalline materials, such as gemstones or metal...

.

During grain boundary migration, the rate determining step depends on the angle between two adjacent grains. In a small angle dislocation boundary, the migration rate depends on vacancy diffusion between dislocations. In a high angle dislocation boundary, this depends on the atom transport by single atom jumps from the shrinking to the growing grains.

Grain boundaries are generally only a few nanometers wide. In common materials, crystallites are large enough that grain boundaries account for a small fraction of the material. However, very small grain sizes are achievable. In nanocrystalline solids, grain boundaries become a significant volume fraction of the material, with profound effects on such properties as diffusion

Diffusion

Molecular diffusion, often called simply diffusion, is the thermal motion of all particles at temperatures above absolute zero. The rate of this movement is a function of temperature, viscosity of the fluid and the size of the particles...

 and plasticity

Plasticity (physics)

In physics and materials science, plasticity describes the deformation of a material undergoing non-reversible changes of shape in response to applied forces. For example, a solid piece of metal being bent or pounded into a new shape displays plasticity as permanent changes occur within the...

. In the limit of small crystallites, as the volume fraction of grain boundaries approaches 100%, the material ceases to have any crystalline character, and thus becomes an amorphous solid

Amorphous solid

In condensed matter physics, an amorphous or non-crystalline solid is a solid that lacks the long-range order characteristic of a crystal....

.

Grain boundaries are also present in magnetic domains

Magnetic domains

A magnetic domain describes a region within a magnetic material which has uniform magnetization. This means that the individual magnetic moments of the atoms are aligned with one another and they point in the same direction...

 in magnetic materials. A computer hard disk, for example, is made of a hard ferromagnetic material that contains regions of atoms whose magnetic moments can be realigned by an inductive head. The magnetization varies from region to region, and the misalignment between these regions forms boundaries that are key to data storage. The inductive head measures the orientation of the magnetic moments of these domain regions and reads out either a “1” or “0”. These bit

Bit

A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

s are the data being read. Grain size is important in this technology because it limits the number of bits that can fit on one hard disk. The smaller the grain sizes, the more data that can be stored.

Because of the dangers of grain boundaries in certain materials such as superalloy

Superalloy

A superalloy, or high-performance alloy, is an alloy that exhibits excellent mechanical strength and creep resistance at high temperatures, good surface stability, and corrosion and oxidation resistance. Superalloys typically have a matrix with an austenitic face-centered cubic crystal structure. ...

 turbine blades, great technological leaps were made to minimize as much as possible the effect of grain boundaries in the blades. The result was directional solidification

Directional solidification

Directional solidification and progressive solidification describe types of solidification within castings. Directional solidification describes solidification that occurs from farthest end of the casting and works its way towards the sprue...

 processing in which grain boundaries were eliminated by producing columnar grain structures aligned parallel to the axis of the blade, since this is usually the direction of maximum tensile stress felt by a blade during its rotation in an airplane. The resulting turbine blades consisted of a single grain, improving reliability.

Generally, polycrystals cannot be superheated

Superheating

In physics, superheating is the phenomenon in which a liquid is heated to a temperature higher than its boiling point, without boiling...

; they will melt promptly once they are brought to a high enough temperature. This is because grain boundaries are amorphous, and serve as nucleation points

Nucleation

Nucleation is the extremely localized budding of a distinct thermodynamic phase. Some examples of phases that may form by way of nucleation in liquids are gaseous bubbles, crystals or glassy regions. Creation of liquid droplets in saturated vapor is also characterized by nucleation...

 for the liquid phase

Phase (matter)

In the physical sciences, a phase is a region of space , throughout which all physical properties of a material are essentially uniform. Examples of physical properties include density, index of refraction, and chemical composition...

. By contrast, if no solid nucleus is present as a liquid cools, it tends to become supercooled

Supercooling

Supercooling, also known as undercooling, is the process of lowering the temperature of a liquid or a gas below its freezing point without it becoming a solid....

. Since this is undesirable for mechanical materials, alloy

Alloy

An alloy is a mixture or metallic solid solution composed of two or more elements. Complete solid solution alloys give single solid phase microstructure, while partial solutions give two or more phases that may or may not be homogeneous in distribution, depending on thermal history...

 designers often take steps against it. See grain refinement.