Tadao Watanabe

A new approach to grain boundary engineering for nanocrystalline materials

A new approach to grain boundary engineering (GBE) for high performance nanocrystalline materials, especially those produced by electrodeposition and sputtering, is discussed on the basis of some important findings from recently available results on GBE for nanocrystalline materials. In order to optimize their utility, the beneficial effects of grain boundary microstructures have been seriously considered according to the almost established approach to GBE. This approach has been increasingly recognized for the development of high performance nanocrystalline materials with an extremely high density of grain boundaries and triple junctions. The effectiveness of precisely controlled grain boundary microstructures (quantitatively characterized by the grain boundary character distribution (GBCD) and grain boundary connectivity associated with triple junctions) has been revealed for recent achievements in the enhancement of grain boundary strengthening, hardness, and the control of segregation-induced intergranular brittleness and intergranular fatigue fracture in electrodeposited nickel and nickel alloys with initial submicrometer-grained structure. A new approach to GBE based on fractal analysis of grain boundary connectivity is proposed to produce high performance nanocrystalline or submicrometer-grained materials with desirable mechanical properties such as enhanced fracture resistance. Finally, the potential power of GBE is demonstrated for high performance functional materials like gold thin films through precise control of electrical resistance based on the fractal analysis of the grain boundary microstructure.

A New Approach to Grain Boundary Engineering for Photovoltaic Polysilicon by Unidirectional and Rotational Solidification

A new approach to grain boundary engineering for photovoltaic polysilicon has been attempted using a new processing method of unidirectional and rotational solidification from the melt, in order to control the grain boundary microstructure and to produce desirable bulk electrical properties. The effect of grain boundary microstructure on bulk electrical properties of polysilicon can be more precisely evaluated by introducing a new parameter “directional grain boundary density (DGBD)” in connection with basic knowledge of structure-dependent grain boundary electrical properties, the grain boundary character distribution (GBCD) and grain boundary geometrical configuration which can be experimentally determined by Orientation Imaging Microscopy (OIM). We report the usefulness of this approach to development of high performance polysilicon.

The State-of-the-Art of Controlling Intergranular Fracture and Brittleness by Grain Boundary Engineering

In last two decades it has been extensively studied whether the grain boundary engineering can be effectively applied to controlling intergranular fracture and brittleness of different kinds of brittle materials. Grain boundary engineering has been well established. A new processing method based on magnetic field application has reached a new stage of grain boundary engineering.