Structural stability of ultrafine-grained copper

Ultrafine-grained (UFG) pure Cu, produced by equal channel angular pressing, was subjected to thermomechanical treatment (TMT) with stepwise deformation at rising temperature. The TMT leads to homogeneous subgrain coarsening according to the established inverse relation between flow stress and steady-state subgrain size and retards static recrystallization during annealing at 403 K.