Thermal activation process of plastic deformation in Fe-18Cr single-crystal micropillars with high-density dislocations

Micropillar compression testing was performed on bcc solid-solution single-crystal micropillars with two diameter (d) ranges (2-3 and 5-6 mu m) prepared on the surfaces of fully annealed and subsequently 10% coldrolled 18Cr ferritic steel specimens. This was done to investigate the effect of initial dislocations on the plastic deformation of micron-sized crystals. The 10% cold rolling process significantly increased the stress level (provided by an activated single slip system) required to initiate slip in the annealed micropillars with different diameter ranges. In the case of the annealed micropillars, the strain-rate sensitivity (m) of the yield stress becomes lower for larger specimens (the m value decreased from 0.12 to 0.04). However, the 10% cold-rolled micropillars exhibited a much lower strain-rate sensitivity regardless of the specimen size. The activation volume (v*) of the annealed micropillars showed a significant specimen size dependency (v*proportional to d1.47), consistent with published data on the micropillar compression experiments of single-crystals of the bcc metals and alloys. For the 10% cold-rolled micropillars, the high v* values (88b3 and 112b3) showed a slight dependency on the specimen size (v*proportional to d0.33). The v* values appeared somewhat higher but were equivalent to those of bulk-size specimens, suggesting that the initial high-density dislocations would provide sufficient sources for dislocation multiplication in the micron-sized specimens under compression. The observed high v* values might be associated with the strong dislocation interactions in the alpha-(Fe, Cr) solid-solution matrix.