Kinetics and dynamics of planar abnormal grain growth in nanocrystalline nickel

Growth of abnormally large grains has been observed previously in nanocrystalline Nickel both in-directly by electron imaging after heat treatment and by in-situ resistivity measurement. However the form and rate of the growth has been derived indirectly. This work makes use of in-situ heat treatment combined with back scattered electron imaging illustrates that the abnormal micro-planar faceted grains grow with a dependence not only on the surrounding but also as the orientation of the growing facet. This observation has shown that the grains grow in a semi-constrained manner such that high index faces such as {211} grow faster than stable {111} faces.