The use of polymer glasses to make structural components has increased significantly over the last decade but is still limited by the tendency of these materials to fail in a macroscopically brittle manner (i.e., with no large scale plastic deformation before cracking). The brittleness can be traced to the formation under tensile stress of small crack-like defects called crazes. Unlike cracks, these are load bearing because their two surfaces are bridged by many small fibrils with diameters in the range 5 to 30 nm.

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