Hardening by annealing: insights from different alloys

In contrast to the general notion about the annealing behavior of coarse grained materials, hardening phenomena in nanocrystalline materials can occur. Although the phenomena have already been recognized several years ago, the mechanisms behind are still controversially discussed. For example, the influence of solutes segregated to grain boundaries on the strengthening mechanism is unclear. We present a combination of atom probe tomography and mechanical data to reveal the role of segregations to the strengthening. The results show that despite large modifications of the boundary chemistry the mechanical behavior remains widely unaffected. Additionally, it will be shown that hardening upon annealing can only occur below a material-specific grain size threshold value.