Influence of the heating rate on the recrystallization behavior of molybdenum

Highlights: ► Strong impact of linear heating rate on recrystallization behavior of Mo studied. ► Two regimes (in case of presence or absence of low T pre-recovery) exist. ► Slow heating: positive effect of pre-recovery on recrystallized volume fraction. ► Rapid heating: energy stored for high T rapid recrystallization. ► Differences in hardness, grain size and texture are discussed. - Abstract: Due to its high stacking fault energy, the recrystallization behavior of molybdenum is strongly dominated by concurrent recovery processes. Therefore, the extent of pre-recovery is believed to influence subsequent recrystallization processes. In the present investigation, this influence was studied by continuous heating experiments of cold-compressed specimens with linear heating rates in the range of 1–1000 K/min to target temperatures in between 800 and 1300 °C. The subsequent microstructural characterization was carried out by electron-channeling-contrast-imaging, hardness tests and electron-back-scatter-diffraction. It was revealed that pre-recovery promoted subsequent recrystallization at lower heating rates (1–100 K/min) which resulted in increased volume fractions of recrystallized grains with decreasing heating rate. In contrast to that, upon rapid heating (1000 K/min), low temperature pre-recovery seemed negligible. Consequently, there was enough stored energy left for rapid recrystallization at higher temperatures. The effect of the heating rate on the recrystallization behavior of molybdenum is discussed.