Cube texture formation of Ni9.3W alloy substrates: preparation by optimized deformation sequence and anneal process

Abstract

The Ni9.3W alloy with no ferromagnetism and high yield strength is one of the most promising textured substrate materials for coated conductors, but its low stacking fault energy makes it difficult to obtain a strong cube texture by traditional rolling methods and recrystallization anneals. This paper introduces four-time static recoveries during the rolling process. Rolled tapes with 80 μm in thickness were obtained by applying various deformation sequences between static recoveries to study their effects on the cube texture formation in Ni9.3W alloy substrates. The results show that rising gradient deformation sequence is an advantageous way to obtain a higher amount of cube texture, its content increases by 29.2% compared to that of traditional deformation sequence. The effect of the new recrystallization annealing process on the cube texture formation was analyzed. It is shown that the cube texture content increases with anneal temperature increasing in one-step anneal, but decreases again at higher anneal temperature. Two-step anneal could effectively improve the cube texture content, which could be further enhanced by extending holding time during the first-step anneal. However, too long holding time leads to the decrease in cube texture content. Finally, Ni9.3W alloy substrates with a cube texture content of ~90.0 vol% (<15°) are obtained by optimized two-step anneal.