The influence of stacking fault energy on the mechanical properties of nanostructured Cu and Cu-Al alloys processed by high-pressure torsion

Nanostructured (NS) Cu and Cu-Al alloys were processed by high-pressure torsion to systematically investigate the influence of stacking fault energy (SFE) on the mechanical properties. It is shown that the strength increases with decreasing SFE and the strength of NS materials with lower Al content is especially sensitive to the characteristics of the processing conditions. The uniform elongation generally increases with decreasing SFE, but this trend is reversed at the smallest grain size of similar to 30 nm. (C) 2011 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.