ENHANCED TENSILE DUCTILITY IN AN ELECTRODEPOSITED CU WITH NANO-SIZED GROWTH TWINS
A fully dense electrodeposited microcrystalline copper with nano-scale twins was synthesized by electrodeposition. The microstructure of this copper was analyzed X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The grains of mean size about 2mm were divided by high density of growth twins with mean lamellar thickness of about 90 nm. Tensile tests at different strain rates and room temperature showed that the strength increased from 379 MPa to 458 MPa with strain rate increasing from 10-5 s-1 to 0.1 s-1. The elongations to fracture were in the range of 13.6~15.5%. So this Cu has good combination of strength and ductility. The strengths are much higher than that determined by Hall-Petch relation with the same grain size, which means that twin boundaries are effective in blocking dislocation motion. The strain rate sensitivity and activation volume estimated from the flow stress versus strain curves was 0.016 and 84 b3~69b3, respectively. Such a large activation volume indicates that the deformation of this copper was controlled by dislocation process.