Bicrystals with an originally flat 89° symmetrical tilt boundary, tilted at 44° to the tensile direction, were strained at high temperatures. Crystallographic slip in grains was suppressed by the special geometry of the bicrystals. Grain-boundary sliding significantly increased the amount of capillarity-driven boundary migration, which tended to turn the boundary normal to the free surfaces. The results were interpreted in terms of the reduced boundary mobility, which was sensitive to grain boundary sliding. The sliding could increase the reduced mobility by an order of magnitude.

The Effect of Grain Boundary Sliding on Curvature-Driven Boundary Migration in Zn Bicrystals. A.D.Sheikh-Ali: Scripta Materialia, 2007, 56[12], 1043-6