3D-characterisation of microstructure evolution during annealing of a deformed aluminum single crystal

• Published in: Acta materialia 2003-05, Vol.51 (9), p.2517-2529
• Main Authors: Poulsen, H.F., Lauridsen, E.M., Schmidt, S., Margulies, L., Driver, J.H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aluminium; Applied sciences; Cold working, work hardening; annealing, post-deformation annealing, quenching, tempering recovery, and crystallization; Cold working, work hardening; annealing, quenching, tempering, recovery, and recrystallization; textures; Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science; rheology; Exact sciences and technology; Materials science; Metals. Metallurgy; Physics; Recovery; Recrystallisation; Texture; Treatment of materials and its effects on microstructure and properties; X-ray diffraction
• ISSN: 1359-6454; 1873-2453
• DOI: 10.1016/S1359-6454(03)00048-X

The microstructure within a 3D volume of a deformed Al single crystal is studied by a novel diffraction method before and after annealing for 5 min at 300 °C. The 99.996% pure single crystal of the S-orientation was channel die deformed to a strain of ϵ=1.5, producing a cell-block structure with distances of about 1 μm between dislocation boundaries. By means of micro-focused hard X-rays from a synchrotron the orientations within a volume of 0.2×0.2×2 mm 3 were mapped non-destructively. Cells or cell-blocks with orientations far from those of the principal poles can be identified individually with a resolving limit of 0.6 μm. The diffraction pattern related to these parts of the orientation distribution show little correlation between the as-deformed and annealed states. They indicate the emergence of recovered cells and/or nuclei with orientations not present in the deformed state.