The mechanical properties of pure iron single crystals and of polycrystalline specimens of a zone-refined iron have been measured in compression over the temperature and strain rate ranges 2.2 to 293 °K and 7 x 10
-7
to 7 x 10
-3
s
-1
respectively. Various yield stress parameters were determined as functions of both temperature and strain rate, and the reversible changes in flow stress produced by isothermal changes of strain rate or by changes of temperature at constant strain rate were also measured as functions of temperature, strain and strain rate. Both the temperature variation of the flow stress and the strain rate sensitivity of the flow stress were generally identical for the single crystals (
ca.
0.005/M carbon) and the polycrystalline specimens (
ca.
9/M carbon). At low temperatures, the temperature dependence of the yield stress was smaller than that of the flow stress at high strains, probably because of the effects of mechanical twinning, but once again the behaviour of single and polycrystalline specimens was very similar. Below 10 °K, both the flow stress and the extrapolated yield stress were independent of temperature. The results show that macroscopic yielding and flow at low temperatures are both governed by the same deformation mechanism, which is not very impurity sensitive, even in the very low carbon range covered by the experiments. The flow stress near 0 °K is
ca.
5.8 x 10
-3
u where [i is the shear modulus. On the basis of a model for thermally activated flow, the activation volume at low temperatures (high stresses) is found to be
ca.
5
b
3
. The exponent in the empirical power law for the dislocation velocity against stress relation is
ca.
3 near room temperature, but becomes quite large at low temperatures. The results indicate that macroscopic deformation at low temperatures is governed by some kind of lattice frictional stress (Peierls-Nabarro force) acting on dislocations.
