Influence of impurities to deformation behavior in magnesium single crystal

Generally, plastic deformation of magnesium alloys is difficult at room temperature. In order to improve formability of magnesium, impurity elements in magnesium were reduced by vapor deposition technique. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) was applied to the determination of trace elements in refined magnesium. To investigate influence of impurity element to deformation behavior, high purity magnesium single crystals were prepared. When the magnesium single crystals are stretched in < 11-20 > direction, {11-22} <-11-23 > pyramidal slips were activated just after yielding in the range of 77K to 293K. The yield stress of high purity magnesium was a half of the stress in raw magnesium.