Fabrication of ultrafine-grained Cu-Mn alloy with uniform microstructure and high mechanical properties

Homogenization, random orientation, and high strength are the research goals of target materials. In this study, the bulk ultrafine-grained (UFG) Cu-5Mn alloy target materials were prepared by two typical severe plastic deformation methods, equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) and auxiliary-cooling multi-pass friction stir processing (MPFSP), and their structure-property relationships were comparatively investigated. Compared to the ECAP sample with extremely heterogeneous microstructure, the MPFSP sample exhibited finer and more uniform equiaxed microstructure with weaker texture and higher tensile strength of 614 MPa, which was consistent with the requirements of an ideal target material. This study provides a new perspective on the optimization of target materials.