Grain size reduction of copper subjected to repetitive uniaxial compression combined with accumulative fold

This paper reports a novel method of repetitive uniaxial compression combined with accumulative fold for preparing bulk submicron- to nanocrystalline copper starting with a coarse grained counterpart. Grain size reduction and microstrain variations of the high purity copper samples after different passes of compression and fold are investigated by scanning electron microscope and x-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. Our results show that the average grain size of samples decreases from about 830nm to 127nm as the number of compression passes increases to 30. Microstrain in the compressed sample is found to increase for the first 20 passes, but to decrease at the last 10 passes. The variations of compressive yield strength and the shift of XRD peaks to larger diffraction angles are observed in the squeezed sample. Our experimental results demonstrate that the repetitive uniaxial compression combined with accumulative fold is an effective method to prepare bulk nanocrystalline metallic materials, in particular for soft metals such as Cu, Al and Pb.