Superplastic Zinc Alloy

Journal

In our new article entitled Precipitation Induced Room Temperature Superplasticity in Zn-Cu Alloys published in Materials Letters, the effect of grain size and precipitates on tensile properties of Zn-1.0Cu alloy are discussed. The alloy was cold rolled and annealed to manipulate the grain size and precipitation of CuZn4 particles at grain boundaries. Cold rolling resulted in an almost ultrafine-grained structure alongside precipitation of nano-sized CuZn4 particles. Mechanically induced precipitates triggered room temperature superplasticity through activation of Zn/CuZn4 boundary sliding, exhibiting maximum elongation of 470% at the strain rate of 1.0 × 10−4 s−1. Short-time annealing led to significantly reduced strain rate sensitivity due to the reduction of CuZn4 fraction, while the grain size remained nearly intact. This suggests that precipitates rather than grain size mainly influence the mechanical properties of Zn alloys.