Plastic deformation drives wrinkling, saddling, and wedging of annular bilayer nanostructures.

We describe the spontaneous wrinkling, saddling, and wedging of metallic, annular bilayer nanostructures driven by grain coalescence in one of the layers. Experiments revealed these different outcomes based on the dimensions of the annuli, and we find that the essential features are captured using finite element simulations of the plastic deformation in the metal bilayers. Our results show that the dimensions and nanomechanics associated with the plastic deformation of planar nanostructures can be important in forming complex three-dimensional nanostructures.