During plastic deformation of typical metals the original grains subdivide. Subdivision by cell formation is a well-known phenomena in metals with medium to high stacking fault energy, but the subdivision may also take place on larger length scales by: i) Formation of single-walled dense dislocation walls (DDWs) and/or double-walled microbands (MBs). The DDWs/MBs are seen as elongated, nearly straight, vertically parallel dislocation boundaries which delineate several cells, thus bounding cell blocks. Typical examples are shown in Fig. 1. ii) Subdivision on a grain scale, for example due to grain-grain interactions or due to the formation of transition bands separating matrix bands. This subdivision is typical for both single crystals and polycrystals. For a general description and recent overview, see [1, 2].

The grain subdivision depends on the orientation of the grains. The morphology may appear different in grains of different orientations and the DDW/MBs can be parallel or inclined to a slip plane.