Institute of Metals Division - Annealing Twins and Coincidence Site Boundaries in High-Purity Lead

Observations are presented of the formation of annealing twins during the growth of a recrystallized grain into a striated, melt-grown crystal of high-purity lead. The formation of an annealing twin resulted in replacement of the original migrating boundary by a large-angle grain boundary of the caincidence-site type or by a near-twin boundary. The results support the Fullman-Fisher theory of annealing twins and demonstrate the usefulness of the coincidence-site model. FULLMAN and Fisher1 have advanced the following theory to account for the formation of annealing twins during grain growth. Whenever a grain A grows into a matrix of grains S1 and S2, a twin A' of grain A may form, as shown in Fig. 1, if the following energetic condition is satisfied: where "E" and "a" refer to the specific interfacial free energy and the area, respectively, of the boundaries indicated by the subscripts. In effect, the twinned grain will persist when the energy of the boundary between the twin(A') and the matrix grain (S, or S,) is less than that of the boundary between the original growing grain (A) and the matrix grain by an amount which exceeds the energy of the coherent twin boundary between A and A'. Experimental observations on the changes in grain boundary free energy accompanying the formation of twins1 are in agreement with the theory outlined in Eq.[l]. Direct observations of the formation of annealing twins at moving grain corners1"3 and the depend-