Work softening and annealing hardening of deformed nanocrystalline nickel

Abstract

We reported that work softening takes place during room-temperature rolling of nanocrystalline Ni at an equivalent strain of around 0.30. The work softening corresponds to a strain-induced phase transformation from a face-centered cubic (fcc) to a body-centered cubic (bcc) lattice. The hardness decreases with increasing volume fraction of the bcc phase. When the deformed samples are annealed at 423 K, a hardening of the samples takes place. This hardening by annealing can be attributed to a variety of factors including the recovery transformation from the bcc to the fcc phase, grain boundary relaxation, and retardation of dislocation gliding by microtwins.