High-throughput screening of critical size of grain growth in gradient structured nickel

Nanocrystalline metals with high Gibbs free energy have a strong tendency towards thermally driven grain growth, thus understanding the critical size or temperature of grain growth is vital for their applications. The investigations of thermal stability were usually conducted on the materials with a homogeneous structure; however, these methods are time-consuming and expensive. In the present work, we reveal a high-throughput experimental strategy to characterize the size-dependent thermal stability via annealing the gradient structured Ni. Employing this method, the critical size of grain growth (d_c) at a given annealing temperature was rapidly determined. The critical size of grain growth was ∼95 nm when annealed at 503 K for 3 h, which is consistent with the value reported in the homogeneous structured Ni. Furthermore, this critical size was found to be identical in three types of gradient structured Ni, i.e., independent on the gradient structure. Our present work demonstrates a high-throughput strategy for exploring the critical size of grain growth and size-dependent thermal stability of metals.