Using high-pressure torsion to process an aluminum–magnesium nanocomposite through diffusion bonding

Disks of commercial Al-1050 and ZK60A alloys were stacked together and then processed by conventional high-pressure torsion (HPT) through 1 and 5 turns at room temperature to investigate the synthesis of an Al–Mg alloy system. Measurements of microhardness and observations of the microstructures and local compositions after processing through 5 turns revealed the formation of an ultrafine multi-layered structure in the central region of the disk but with an intermetallic b-Al3Mg2 phase in the form of nano-layers in the nanostructured Al matrix near the edge of the disk. The activation energy for diffusion bonding of the Al and Mg phases was estimated and it is shown that this value is low and consistent with surface diffusion due to the very high density of vacancy-type defects introduced by HPT processing. The results demonstrate a significant potential for making use of HPT processing in the preparation of new alloy systems.