A comparison study of dislocation density, recrystallization and grain growth among nickel, FeNiCo ternary alloy and FeNiCoCrMn high entropy alloy

Abstract

The microstructural evolutions in terms of dislocation density, annealing twin density as well as with respect to microstructural changes due to recrystallization and grain growth were investigated in pure Ni, equiatomic FeNiCo alloy, and FeNiCoCrMn high entropy alloy (HEA) during the thermomechanical process. All samples were single phase and showed a face-centered cubic (FCC) lattice structure. This was maintained during thermomechanical processing comprising of cold swaging by 85% reduction of cross-sectional area and subsequent annealing at 800 °C. The level of dislocation accumulation during cold swaging increased with the number of constituent elements. The FeNiCoCrMn HEA obtained the highest dislocation density, followed by the FeNiCo and Ni, respectively. After the annealing at 800 °C for 0.5 h, all samples achieved the large fraction of recrystallized grains with minor fraction of substructured grains and no deformed grain. The FeNiCoCrMn HEA obtained the smallest recrystallized grain size (∼5 μm) after the annealing at 800 °C for 0.5 h. This could be a result of the highest dislocation density generated during cold swaging prior to the annealing. The prolonged annealing at 800 °C for up to 24 h led to a grain growth for all the samples, however, at different growth rates. The FeNiCoCrMn HEA revealed the lowest rate of grain growth, but the microstructural changes during the annealing were not significantly different between the FeNiCo and Ni samples. Besides the effect of the number of constituent elements, the type and the combination of constituent elements have an effect on the microstructural evolution during the annealing.