Grain boundary diffusion in metals

Abstract

Grain boundary (GB) diffusion plays an important role in many processes taking place in engineering materials at elevated temperatures. Such processes include Coble creep, sintering, diffusion-induced grain boundary migration, discontinuous reactions (such as discontinuous precipitation, discontinuous coarsening, etc.), recrystallization, and grain growth. GB diffusion is important not only at high temperatures but sometimes also at relatively low, even ambient temperatures. In particular, the service life of many microelectronic elements and devices is limited by room temperature diffusion or electromigration of detrimental impurities along GBs resulting in the degradation of service characteristics.