Nanomaterials have been produced in the past mainly by bottom-up
methods: by producing single or clusters of nanocrystals by
inert gas condensation, ball milling and electrodeposition, or
by thermal growth from the amorphous state. In all cases, the
sample size has been limited to just a few millimeters. This
fact has limited their application as functional materials so
far, especially for commercial use. Over the past decade, the
severe-plastic-deformation (SPD) technique has proven to be the
most-promising top-down processing route. It allows bulk, dense,
nanostructured samples of a size far beyond 10 mm in each
dimension. The most-commonly used SPD method, equal channel
angular pressing (ECAP), has the highest potential in this
respect. Bulk nanomagnets and nanostructured shape memory alloys
processed by SPD represent activities of the recently
established Austrian National Research Network ‘High-Performance
Bulk Nanocrystalline Materials’ of the Austrian Science Fund.
This network comprises five research