Microstructure–mechanical property relationships in ultrafine-grained NbZr Original Research Article

The present paper reports on the microstructure–mechanical property relationships in an ultrafine-grained (UFG) niobium–1 wt.% zirconium (NbZr) alloy, a potential biomedical material, severe plastically deformed at room temperature utilizing equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE). Monotonic tensile and low-cycle fatigue (LCF) experiments were carried out on the NbZr samples processed along ECAE routes 8BC and 16E, along with extensive microstructure analysis. The important finding is that the NbZr alloy processed along ECAE routes that lead to a higher volume fraction of high-angle grain boundaries (HAGBs) exhibits a stable cyclic deformation response in the LCF regime. This stands in good agreement with prior studies on other materials, such as UFG interstitial-free steel, in which the stable fatigue behavior was associated with the dominance of HAGBs. The current results provide a venue for utilizing the UFG NbZr alloy in biomedical applications that require a combination of long-term durability, high strength and very good biocompatibility, where the latter is not altered by ECAE processing. Furthermore, for the first time, we present guidelines for optimizing processing parameters that define the microstructure–cyclic stability relationship in UFG alloys.