Effect of deformation mechanisms on the strength-ductility trade-off of Cu and CuAl alloy

Deformation and subsequent annealing are often combined to optimize the overall mechanical properties of metallic materials. In this work, the strength-ductility trade-off between dynamic plastic deformation (DPD)-induced and annealed DPD structures in Cu and Cu-4.5Al alloy was compared. The strength-ductility combination of the DPD Cu samples is inferior to that of the annealed DPD Cu samples, while the strength-ductility synergy of the DPD Cu-4.5Al samples is comparable to that of the annealed DPD Cu-4.5Al samples, for which the reasons were analyzed based on the tensile deformation mechanism of these samples. This work suggested that high performance metallic materials can be obtained by just one-step plastic deformation without subsequent annealing treatment, which would be an economic and effective way to improve the strength-ductility combination of face-centered-cubic metals and alloys with a low stacking fault energy.