Isothermal annealing of cold-rolled high-purity nickel

Electron backscattered patterns have been employed to reveal the details of the texture evolution in 90%, 95% and 97.5% cold-rolled, polycrystalline, high-purity nickel specimens after I h anneals at a variety of temperatures. The results show that increasing the thickness reduction of cold-rolling both strengthened the cube texture developed after primary recrystallization, and increased its thermal stability at elevated temperatures. In the 90% cold-rolled specimens, secondary recrystallization occur-red during annealing at 600 degrees C but could not be completed at temperatures up to 1000 degrees C. In contrast, extensive secondary recrystallization occurred in 95% and 97.5% cold-rolled specimens that were annealed at temperatures up to 1000 degrees C. Most of the orientations of the second recrystallized grains were related to the primarily recrystallized cube texture by a 41 degrees rotation around about < 1 1 1 > axis or a 27 degrees rotation about < 2 1 1 >, while a few secondary-recrystallized grains were found to have an 18 degrees/< 1 0 0 > misorientation relationship with the cube-oriented matrix. It appears that the preferred rotation angles/axes is dependent on the rolling reduction. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.