Grain boundary sliding in copper and its relation to cavity formation during creep

A model by Lim for cavity nucleation at junctions between cell and grain boundaries has been adapted to oxygen free pure copper Cu-OF and Cu-OFP. The results show that the gain in free energy at cavity nucleation is much larger for Cu-OF than for Cu-OFP implying that Cu-OF is much more prone to cavity formation. The modelled difference in free energy gain is sufficient to quantitatively explain the much higher creep ductility in Cu-OFP than in Cu-OF.