2017/10/11 by Zhuoran Zeng, Jian‐Feng Nie, Shi-wei Xu +2 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Engineering · #Magnesium Alloys: Properties and Applications #Aluminum Alloys Composites Properties #Microstructure and mechanical properties
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01330-9
openalex publication_date 2017/10/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Magnesium, the lightest structural metal, is difficult to form at room temperature due to an insufficient number of deformation modes imposed by its hexagonal structure and a strong texture developed during thermomechanical processes. Although appropriate alloying additions can weaken the texture, formability improvement is limited because alloying additions do not fundamentally alter deformation modes. Here we show that magnesium can become super-formable at room temperature without alloying. Despite possessing a strong texture, magnesium can be cold rolled to a strain at least eight times that possible in conventional processing. The resultant cold-rolled sheet can be further formed without cracking due to grain size reduction to the order of one micron and inter-granular mechanisms becoming dominant, rather than the usual slip and twinning. These findings provide a pathway for developing highly formable products from magnesium and other hexagonal metals that are traditionally difficult to form at room temperature.Replacing steel or aluminium vehicle parts with magnesium would result in reduced emissions, but shaping magnesium without cracking remains challenging. Here, the authors successfully extrude and roll textured magnesium into ductile foil at low temperatures by activating intra-granular mechanisms.