Grain growth in nanocrystalline nickel during non-isothermal annealing was studied by means of differential scanning calorimetry and transmission electron microscopy. Nanocrystalline nickel was prepared by electrodeposition at a pulsed voltage. Its nonisothermal annealing was accompanied by anomalous grain growth; at a temperature corresponding to a differential scanning calorimetry peak, a bimodal grain structure forms. The processing of differential scanning calorimetry signals in terms of the Avrami formalism permits the grain growth activation energy to be determined, which was found to be close to the activation energy of grain-boundary self-diffusion. The anomalous grain growth creates conditions such that grain-boundary diffusion was a controlling stage of the process.

Role of Grain-Boundary Diffusion in the Grain Growth in Nanocrystalline Nickel. A.N.Aleshin: Russian Metallurgy, 2008, 2008[4], 286-93