Kinetics of individual grains during recrystallization of cold-rolled copper

The formation of a recrystallization texture is closely related to the nucleation and growth of recrystallizing grains, which may vary from grain to grain. Cube texture is a commonly observed recrystallization texture in face centered cubic metals of medium to high stacking fault energy after heavy cold-rolling and annealing. In this work, recrystallization of pure copper cold-rolled to a von Mises strain of 2.7 was investigated in situ using three-dimensional X-ray diffraction. Growth curves of 835 grains were determined, and the curves of cube and non-cube grains were compared. It was found that the nucleation times of cube grains and non-cube grains were similar, whereas the growth rates of a few but not all cube grains were high. Effects hereof for the development of the cube texture were discussed.