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Grain Boundary Character Distributions in Nanocrystalline Metals Produced by Different Processing Routes

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Abstract

Nanocrystalline materials are defined by their fine grain size, but details of the grain boundary character distribution should also be important. Grain boundary character distributions are reported for ball-milled, sputter-deposited, and electrodeposited Ni and Ni-based alloys, all with average grain sizes of ~20 nm, to study the influence of processing route. The two deposited materials had nearly identical grain boundary character distributions, both marked by a Σ3 length percentage of 23 to 25 pct. In contrast, the ball-milled material had only 3 pct Σ3-type grain boundaries and a large fraction of low-angle boundaries (16 pct), with the remainder being predominantly random high angle (73 pct). These grain boundary character measurements are connected to the physical events that control their respective processing routes. Consequences for material properties are also discussed with a focus on nanocrystalline corrosion. As a whole, the results presented here show that grain boundary character distribution, which has often been overlooked in nanocrystalline metals, can vary significantly and influence material properties in profound ways.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through a CAREER Award No. DMR-1255305. This work was partly performed under the auspices of the U. S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. D.B.B. and M.K. were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Science and Engineering under FWP# SCW0939. D.B.B. also acknowledges the support of the Livermore Graduate Scholar Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory during part of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    David B. Bober (Graduate Student, Livermore Graduate Scholar) & Timothy J. Rupert (Assistant Professor)

  2. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA

    David B. Bober (Graduate Student, Livermore Graduate Scholar) & Mukul Kumar (Group Leader)

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    Amirhossein Khalajhedayati (Graduate Student) & Timothy J. Rupert (Assistant Professor)

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  1. David B. Bober
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The submitted manuscript has been authored by a contractor of the U.S. Government under contract number DE-AC52-07NA27344. Accordingly the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, royalty-free license to publish or reproduce the published form of this contribution, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.

Manuscript submitted May 26, 2015.

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Bober, D.B., Khalajhedayati, A., Kumar, M. et al. Grain Boundary Character Distributions in Nanocrystalline Metals Produced by Different Processing Routes. Metall Mater Trans A 47, 1389–1403 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-015-3274-9

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