The role of crystal misorientations during solid-state nucleation of ferrite in austenite

The role of grain and phase boundary misorientations during nucleation of ferrite in austenite has been investigated. Electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD) was performed on a high-purity iron alloy with 20 wt.% Cr and 12 wt.% Ni with austenite and ferrite stable at room temperature in order to identify the crystallographic misorientation between austenite grains and between ferrite and austenite grains. It is observed that the specific orientation relationships between ferrite and austenite play a dominant role during solid-state nucleation of ferrite. Ferrite grains nucleate on grain faces independently of the misorientation between austenite grains, although random high-angle grain boundaries have a slightly higher efficiency. Different types of nucleation mechanisms are found to be active during ferrite formation at grain faces. A slight deformation of the austenite matrix was found to triple the number of ferrite nuclei during isothermal annealing.