Quantitative analysis of the recovery process in pure iron using X-ray diffraction line profile analysis

We conducted quantitative analysis of the recovery process during pure iron annealing using the modified Williamson-Hall and Warren-Averbach methods. We prepared four types of specimens with different dislocation substructures. By increasing the annealing temperature, we confirmed a decrease in dislocation density. In particular, screw-dislocation density substantially decreased in the early stage of the recovery process, while edge-dislocation density gradually decreased as annealing temperature increased. Moreover, changes in hardness during the recovery process mainly depended on edge-dislocation density. Increases in annealing temperature weakly affected the dislocation arrangement parameter and crystallite size. Recovery-process modeling demonstrated that the decrease in screw-dislocation density during the recovery process was mainly dominated by glide and/or cross-slip with dislocation core diffusion. In contrast, the decrease in edge-dislocation density during the recovery process was governed by a climbing motion with both dislocation core diffusion and lattice self-diffusion. From the above results, we succeeded in quantitatively distinguishing between edge- and screw-dislocation density during the recovery process, which are difficult to distinguish using transmission electron microscope and electron backscatter diffraction.