Grain boundary relaxation induced ultrastrong-and-ductile bulk pure Ni

Abstract

Both strength and ductility are essential for high-performance engineering structural materials, thus great endeavors have been invested to solve the strength-ductility trade-off of them during recent two decades. Here, we utilized grain boundary (GB) relaxation to circumvent the trade-off in bulk pure Ni through optimizing grain size when literatures tells that GB relaxation can improve strength but ductility. Both tensile strength and uniform elongation of Ni were elevated from 1450 MPa to 2013 MPa and from 2.33% to 5.17%, respectively. The combination of strength and ductility extends beyond the range established by the strongest bulk pure Ni known. Our investigation unraveled that the increased strength was produced by GB relaxation which remarkably mitigated GB softening produced by GB sliding, and that partial dislocation emission from GBs became the dominant plastic deformation mechanism. The dislocation activities inside the grains increased the strain hardening rate (θ). At the same time, enhanced probability of interaction between dislocations and GBs improved the strain rate sensitivity (m). It was the GB relaxation induced dislocation activities that improved θ and m, which stabilized the plastic deformation to enhance ductility. The present work offers a foundation for the ongoing of more advanced engineering structural materials with the advisable design of GB complexion.