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The grain boundary character distribution of highly twinned nanocrystalline thin film aluminum compared to bulk microcrystalline aluminum

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Abstract

The grain boundary character distribution (GBCD) of a 100-nm-thick Al thin film was measured as a function of annealing time by transmission electron microscopy-based crystal orientation mapping and compared to a bulk material with a grain size of 23 μm. The most significant difference between the thin film and bulk GBCDs is the concentration of Σ3 boundaries (boundaries with a misorientation of 60° around [111]), which were mostly coherent twins. The length fraction of Σ3 boundaries in the as-deposited thin film is 0.245, more than ten times the length fraction in the bulk sample (0.016). Although the concentrations of Σ3 boundaries are very different in the two samples, the population distributions are strongly correlated for all misorientations except Σ3. The results indicate that the characteristic GBCD develops at grain sizes as small as 109 nm. Annealing the thin film samples at 400 °C for 30 min or more leads to a strong 〈111〉 grain orientation texture and a decrease in the concentration of Σ3 grain boundaries. Grain size distributions for the samples in the current study show good agreement with prior reports that used image-based methods.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support of the SRC, Task 1292.008, 2121.001, 2323.001 and of the MRSEC programs of the NSF under DMR-0520425 and DMR-1420634 is gratefully acknowledged. G.S.R. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation under Grant DMR 1628994 and use of the Materials Characterization Facility at Carnegie Mellon University supported by Grant MCF-677785.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Gregory S. Rohrer, Madeleine N. Kelly & Noel T. Nuhfer

  2. NanoMEGAS USA, 1095 W. Rio Salado Parkway #110, Tempe, AZ, 85281, USA

    Xuan Liu, Jiaxing Liu & Amith Darbal

  3. Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, 500 W. 120th St., New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Xiwen Chen, Michael A. Berkson & Katayun Barmak

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Boulevard, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA

    Kevin R. Coffey

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  1. Gregory S. Rohrer
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Correspondence to Katayun Barmak.

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Rohrer, G.S., Liu, X., Liu, J. et al. The grain boundary character distribution of highly twinned nanocrystalline thin film aluminum compared to bulk microcrystalline aluminum. J Mater Sci 52, 9819–9833 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-017-1112-8

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