The effect of impurity level on ultrafine-grained microstructures and their stability in low stacking fault energy silver

The effect of impurity content on the evolution of microstructure in low stacking fault energy silver processed by severe plastic deformation (SPD) was studied. The SPD-processing was carried out on 4N5 and 4N purity Ag samples by equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) up to 16 passes. It was found that, although the minimum grain size and the maximum dislocation density were not affected by the different impurity atom content, there is a lower degree of twinning in the less pure material for high number of passes. The small increase of impurity level from 4N5 to 4N in Ag resulted in a significantly better thermal stability at room temperature for the ultrafine-grained microstructures obtained by ECAP.