Large-scale fabrication method of heterostructured materials using conventional cold-rolling for industrial applications

Heterostructured materials offer great promise as next-generation structural materials, providing excellent combinations of strength and elongation. However, the need for additional equipment for heterostructuring poses challenges for scalability. In this study, we propose a strategy to fabricate heterostructured materials using conventional cold-rolling, eliminating the need for additional pre- or post-treatments. This newly developed method refines only surface grains with shear stress induced by cold-rolling performed at a slight thickness reduction. The cold-rolled samples exhibited improved strengths at the expense of ductility compared to the asreceived homogeneous sample, primarily attributed to the heterogeneous strengthening effect and the increased pre-existing dislocation densities. Depending on the cold-rolling process conditions, yield strength increased from 85.6 MPa to 138.6 MPa, and the corresponding elongation loss was 5.5% and 14.8%, respectively. The increase in yield strength of the cold-rolled samples at the same uniform elongation as the as-received sample, calculated using a trend line, was about 51.5 MPa. This proposed strategy has the potential to advance the industrialization of heterostructured materials by enabling large-scale fabrication using conventional processing equipment.