Correlation between Processing Conditions, Lattice Defect Structure and Mechanical Performance of Ultrafine-Grained Materials

The mechanical performance of ultrafine-grained materials is strongly influenced by the lattice defect structure, i.e. the vacancy concentration, the type, arrangement and density of dislocations, the planar fault probability, as well as the amount and character of grain boundaries. In this paper, the correlation between the processing conditions, the lattice defect structure and the plastic behavior of ultrafine-grained materials is overviewed. For the processing route of severe plastic deformation, the influence of applied strain, hydrostatic pressure, as well as melting point, stacking fault energy and alloying on grain size, dislocation density and strength is studied. For nanopowder sintering techniques, the effect of atmosphere, temperature and time of consolidation on lattice defects and mechanical properties is discussed in detail

Nanocrystalline materials studied by powder diffraction line profile analysis

X-ray powder diffraction is a powerful tool for characterising the microstructure of crystalline materials in terms of size and strain. It is widely applied for nanocrystalline materials, especially since other methods, in particular electron microscopy is, on the one hand tedious and time consuming, on the other hand, due to the often metastable states of nanomaterials it might change their microstructures. It is attempted to overview the applications of microstructure characterization by powder diffraction on nanocrystalline metals, alloys, ceramics and carbon base materials. Whenever opportunity is given, the data provided by the X-ray method are compared and discussed together with results of electron microscopy. Since the topic is vast we do not try to cover the entire field

Correlation between subgrains and coherently scattering domains

Crystallite size determined by X-ray line profile analysis is often smaller than the grain or subgrain size obtained by transmission electron microscopy, especially when the material has been produced by plastic deformation. It is shown that besides differences in orientation between grains or subgrains, dipolar dislocation walls without differences in orientation also break down coherency of X-rays scattering. This means that the coherently scattering domain size provided by X-ray line profile analysis provides subgrain or cell size bounded by dislocation boundaries or dipolar walls

Thermal stability of the microstructure of severely deformed copper

Copper specimens were deformed by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) up to 8 passes. The microstructure was studied by X-ray line profile analysis. The crystallite size is reduced to a few tens of nanometers even after the first ECAP pass and it does not change significantly during further deformation. At the same time, the dislocation density increases gradually up to 4 ECAP passes. The thermal stability of the microstructure is examined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The temperature of the DSC peak decreases whereas the stored energy increases with increasing strain. At the beginning of the heat release a bimodal grain structure develops indicated by a special double-peak shape of the diffraction line profiles

Influence of sintering temperature and pressure on crystallite size and lattice defect structure in nanocrystalline SiC

Microstructure of sintered nanocrystalline SiC is studied by x-ray line profile analysis and transmission electron microscopy. The lattice defect structure and the crystallite size are determined as a function of pressure between 2 and 5.5 GPa for different sintering temperatures in the range from 1400 to 1800 degrees C. At a constant sintering temperature, the increase of pressure promotes crystallite growth. At 1800 degrees C when the pressure reaches 8 GPa, the increase of the crystallite size is impeded. The grain growth during sintering is accompanied by a decrease in the population of planar faults and an increase in the density of dislocations. A critical crystallite size above which dislocations are more abundant than planar defects is suggested

Phase transition in nanomagnetite

Recently, the application of nanosized magnetite particles became an area of growing interest for their potential practical applications. Nanosized magnetite samples of 36 and 9 nm sizes were synthesized. Special care was taken on the right stoichiometry of the magnetite particles. Mössbauer spectroscopy measurements were made in 4.2–300 K temperature range. The temperature dependence of the intensities of the spectral components indicated size dependent transition taking place in a broad temperature range. For nanosized samples, the hyperfine interaction values and their relative intensities changed above the Verwey transition temperature value of bulk megnetite. The continuous transition indicated the formation of dendritelike granular assemblies formed during the preparation of the samples

Depth-sensing indentation tests in studying plastic instabilities

This review surveys the phenomenon of plastic instabilities occurring in depth-sensing indentation measurements. Investigations presented focus on the characterization of Portevin-Le Chatelier type instabilities observed in different metal alloys during indentation. The effect of some important factors such as solute concentration, the formation of Guinier-Preston zones, and grain size and orientation are described and discussed. The phenomenon of plastic instabilities as serrated flow recently observed in bulk metallic glasses is also briefly reviewed