Grain and subgrain boundaries in ultrafine-grained materials

The attractive metallographic electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) method is used to describe the effect of the number N of passes on the subgrain and grain structures of pure aluminium and copper processed by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP). The remarkable feature of the aluminium structure is the lack of high angle boundaries after a low number (N = 2, 4) of passes and this remains preserved even after a relatively long annealing time. On the other hand, the boundary structure of copper is relatively stable and high angle boundaries always prevail.