. (2012).Study of vacancy-type defects by positron annihilation in ultrafine-grained aluminum severely deformed at room and cryogenic temperatures.Acta Materialia, 60 (10), 4218-4228. Abstract Commercial-purity aluminum was processed by equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) at room temperature (RT-ECAP) and cryogenic temperature (CT-ECAP) with liquid nitrogen cooling between two successive passes. It was found that the RT-ECAPed samples showed equiaxed microstructure after 4 and 8 ECAP passes, while the CT-ECAPed samples displayed slightly elongated microstructure and slightly smaller grain size. Moreover, the CT-ECAPed samples had higher hardness values than the RT-ECAPed samples subjected to the same amount of deformation. Positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS) was used to investigate the evolution of vacancytype defects during the ECAP deformation process. The results showed that three types of defects existed in the ECAPed samples: vacancies associated with dislocations, bulk monovacancies and bulk divacancies. The CT-ECAPed samples had a higher fraction of monovacancies and divacancies. These two types of defects are the major vacancy-type defects that can work as dislocation pinning centers and induce hardening, resulting in higher hardness values in the CT-ECAPed samples. A quantitative relationship between material hardness and the defect concentration and defect diffusion coefficient has been established. Authors

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