Abnormal grain growth in ultrafine grained Ni under high-cycle loading

Abnormal grain growth can occur in polycrystalline materials with only a fraction of grains growing drastically to consume other grains. Here we report abnormal grain growth in ultrafine grained metal in a rarely explored high-cycle loading regime at ambient temperature. Abnormal grain growth is observed in electroplated Ni microbeams with average initial grain sizes less than 640 nm under a large number of loading cycles (up to 109) with low...