Role of Solute in the Texture Modification During Hot Deformation of Mg-Rare Earth Alloys

Although conventional Mg alloys develop strong crystallographic textures during deformation that persist during annealing, the addition of rare earth (RE) elements can induce comparably weaker textures. The texture weakening effect is explored using hot-rolled Mg-Y alloys of a single phase to focus on the possibility of solute effects. Of the studied compositions, the richer alloys (≥0.17 at. pct) show the weakening effect, whereas the most dilute alloy (≤0.03 at. pct) does not. Electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) analysis of intragranular misorientation axes (IGMA) indicate that the geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) content in dilute, hot-rolled alloys contain primarily basal 〈a〉 dislocations. At higher concentrations, the dislocations are predominantly prismatic 〈a〉 type. This change in the GND content suggests a change in dynamic recrystallization (DRX) mode. For example, nonbasal cross slip has been associated with continuous DRX. Furthermore, nonbasal slip might also promote more homogenous shear banding/twinning. Both of these mechanisms have been shown previously to give rise to more randomly oriented nuclei during DRX. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy performed through transmission electron microscopy shows that Mg-Y exhibits significant grain boundary solute segregation, consistent with recent observations of solute clustering. Slow grain growth may be explained by solute drag. It is hypothesized that limited grain boundary mobility suppresses conventional discontinuous DRX, which has been shown to retain the deformation texture. The promotion of nonbasal slip and suppression of grain boundary mobility are proposed as solid solution-based mechanisms responsible for the observed texture weakening phenomenon in Mg rare earth alloys.