Grain boundary dynamics and selective grain growth in non-ferromagnetic metals in high magnetic fields

Grain boundary motion can be affected by a magnetic field if the anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility generates a gradient of the magnetic free-energy density across the boundary. Due to this magnetic driving force, annealing of locally deformed single crystals in high magnetic fields results in growth selection. The character distribution of the boundaries connected to growth selection is found to be far from random. If a magnetic energy density gradient as a driving force is superimposed to a curvature driving force during grain growth, this biases the microstructure evolution with regard to grain size and crystallographic texture, as it is demonstrated on polycrystalline zinc and titanium. Analysis of individual orientation data reveals that the observed asymmetrical texture stems to a large extent from a difference in grain numbers of the individual texture components.