From an EBSD map made on a polycrystal one can define a set of grains using a criterion of misorientation between the adjacent pixels. Once such a list of grains is obtained, various quantities can be associated to each grain such as its size, (mean) orientation, GOS (Grain Orientation Spread) etc... The GOS associated to one grain is the mean value of the misorientations between all the pixels of the grain and the mean orientation of the grain. This value is quite sensitive to the state of the material (degree of plastic deformation, degree of recrystallization for example). Therefore it can help in interpreting the evolution of a microstructure during thermomechanical treatments. It is the purpose of this presentation to provide GOS values for an IF steel after several degrees of plastic deformation as well as after several annealing treatments which lead to partially or totally recrystallized states. The sources of influence on GOS values (as grain detection limit or grain size) are analyzed. The link between the values and the state of the material will be discussed at a global stage for a given population of grains.

This paper reports the effect of Silicon substrate orientation and Aluminum nitride buffer layer deposited by molecular beam epitaxy on the growth of aluminum nitride thin films deposited by a DC magnetron sputtering technique at low temperatures. The structural analysis has revealed a strong (0001) fiber texture for both Si(100) and (111) substrates, and a hetero-epitaxial growth on a AlN buffer layer, which is only a few nanometers in size, grown by MBE onthe Si(111) substrate. SEM images and XRD characterization have shown an enhancement in AlN crystallinity. Raman spectroscopy indicated that the AlN film was relaxed when it deposited on Si(111), in compression on Si(100) and under tension on a AlN buffer layer grown by MBE/Si(111) substrates, respectively. The interface between Si(111) and AlN grown by MBE is abrupt and well defined, contrary to the interface between AlN deposited using PVD and AlN grown by MBE. Nevertheless, AlN hetero-epitaxial growth was obtained at a low temperature (<250 °C).

In the frame of this work, we report a profound insight into the thermal conductivity (k) of aluminum nitride (AlN) thin films deposited on AlN-molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)/Si(111) and AlN-Kyma/Si(111) substrates at low temperatures (<200 °C) using reactive direct current magnetron sputtering (DCMS). Our concern is not on the thermal properties at the nanoscale, but rather on relating thermal macroscopic properties to the microstructure for submicronic to micronic AlN films. As the mean free path for AlN material is about 100 nm, the thickness of our films lies between 400 nm and 2 μm. The k measurements were conducted using the ultra-fast transient hot strip technique. It was found that the k values of the deposited films change depending on both the substrate type and the film thickness. For the 500 nm AlN thick film, k value was about 250 W m−1 K−1 for AlN-DCMS films grown on 10 nm AlN-MBE/Si against 90 W m−1 K−1 for those deposited on 200 nm AlN-Kyma/Si. The thermal boundary resistance has been computed equal to (0.25 ± 0.08) × 10−9 K m2 W−1 on 10 nm AlN-MBE/Si against (3.56 ± 1.50) × 10−9 K m2 W−1 on 200 nm AlN-Kyma/Si. Additionally, both pole figures and high resolution transmission electron microscopy confirm k results. In fact, pole figures confirm the good crystal quality of the film on both substrates, but HR-TEM analyses show that the AlN films grown on 10 nm AlN-MBE/Si template exhibit good crystalline quality with an epitaxial regrowth and abrupt interface compared to those obtained for 200 nm AlN-Kyma/Si. It also appears that the thermal boundary resistance plays a major role in the thermal properties of AlN films.

Grain size is an important microstructural feature of materials; it contributes to its mechanical and physical properties. Quantitative information of three-dimensional topological evolution during the three-dimensional normal grain growth process is very rare. In this work, an isothermal Monte Carlo procedure is applied to study the kinetics of normal grain growth in three dimensions using the Monte Carlo technique. Monte Carlo simulation of the grain growth in polycrystalline materials employed maps the microstructure onto a discrete lattice. It consists in evaluation of potential energy of a lattice point. Therefore, the choice of the simulation parameters can affect the grain growth characteristics. We attempted to define specific simulation parameters for the three dimensional MC simulation of grain growth using theses lattices. The parameters include the choice of the lattice symmetry, the pixels number and the number of the nearest neighbor lattice sites in the calculation of the system energy. The goal of these computer simulations is to provide insights on the simulated structure and to analyze the grain growth kinetics for the 3D domain through several 2D cross-sections. Compact microstructures were developed and the first results show that the lattice symmetry and the neighbours number have a fundamental influence on the results of grain growth simulation. The saturation is too rapid with only the consideration of the 1st neighbours while acceptable similar evolutions are obtained for the 2nd or 3rd neighbours consideration. Grain size evolution obeys the power law kinetics for the 2D cross-section confirming the quasi-steady state of the 3D normal grain growth. The highest grain growth velocity and grain size were obtained at the cross-sections of the heart of microstructures. One other noted information is the existence of a minority of grains which continue to grow slowly leading up to the abnormal grain growth.

The polycrystalline nature of steel sheets plays a fundamental role in their plastic behavior during forming, especially under complex stresses, such as the deep drawing process. Heterogeneous microstructures cause variable internal stress levels, which strongly impact the material’s macroscopic mechanical properties. X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique can be applied to determine microscopic internal stresses by peaks broadening analysis, which can be related to the degree of cold work at the microscopic level. As deep drawing is a complex deformation mode, an important motivating factor to perform such a study is to find the correlation between anisotropy and XRD peak broadening through tensile deformation tests. Therefore, the initial mechanical state and different deformed states were analysed by in-situ XRD peak broadening under tensile tests in various directions in the rolling plane of mild steel sheet, for both the elastic and plastic deformation domains. The results showed that the XRD peak broadening gives accurate estimations of deformation degrees. In the elastic domain, under realistic assumptions, a relation between the relative variation of peak broadening and the applied stress σ, like Hooke’s law, was obtained by exploiting the linearity between the peak broadening and the elongation measured by the strain gauge. This formula may be used to deduce The Young’s modulus. Interesting empirical relations between peak broadenings, macro deformations and hardness have been also established for the studied sheet in the plastic deformation region. Moreover, XRD peak broadenings were able to characterize the anisotropy of deformation in the rolling plane of the sheet. They are like the anisotropy coefficients in indicating the expected behavior under complex processes such as deep drawing by using ordinary tensile tests.