Abstract
The influence of Mn solute atoms on sub-grain boundary mobilities in Al has been determined by accurate electron backscatter diffraction analysis of the sub-grain sizes and misorientations during recovery annealing. High purity Al-0.1 and 0.3 wt.% Mn alloys were deformed by plane strain compression at room temperature to equivalent strains of 1.8 and annealed in the temperature range 150-300 °C. An original method of image analysis on sub-boundaries from electron backscatter diffraction maps was applied to quantify the sub-grain size distributions. The change in average sub-grain size with time at several temperatures was then used to estimate sub-grain boundary mobilities in both Al-Mn alloys. The activation energies for sub-grain mobility were found to be 48 and 52 and kJ.mol-1 for the 0.1 and 0.3 % Mn alloys respectively, with the higher Mn alloy exhibiting lower rates. The sub-boundary mobilities are higher than expected from previous similar work on deformed Al-Si crystals. The orientation dependence of sub-grain growth is also examined.