Unraveling the nature of room temperature grain growth in nanocrystalline materials

We report on the observation of real-time-resolved room temperature grain growth in nanocrystalline metals. We find that neither the time evolution of size can be modeled by standard growth theories nor are there any other systems aware to us that manifest a similar growth behaviour. We detect a transition from an initially self-similar slow growth to abnormal grain growth. Its onset seems to be associated with the simultaneous decrease of microstrain with increasing grain size. Abnormal grain growth is considered as a generic feature of nanocrystallinity but is a transient state since we observed in the late stage of coarsening, using orientational imaging microscopy, a monomodal grain size distribution. We empirically find a nonlinear-response-type of growth law which is in agreement with the observed coarsening kinetics. (C) 2008 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.