Strong and ductile steel via high dislocation density and heterogeneous nano/ultrafine grains

High strength and high ductility are critical to metallic materials and have always been pursued. A novel strategy to produce a medium Mn stainless steel with high dislocation density and heterogeneous nano/ultrafine-grains was designed and outstanding mechanical properties were achieved. The special heterogeneous microstructure was fabricated by cold rolling followed by rapid reverse annealing at intercritical temperature and a final step of low-temperature tempering. The results of this study demonstrated that the heterogeneous microstructure consisted of 74% reversed austenite, 16% deformed austenite and 10% tempered martensite. The dislocation density in austenite of the final microstructure had a high value of 1.12 × 1015 m−2 and the average grain size was 0.63 μm. The high yield strength (1324 MPa) and tensile strength (1401 MPa) of the steel were achieved and combined with high uniform elongation of 34.7%. The combination of high dislocation density (dislocation strengthening) and heterogeneous nano/ultrafine grains (fine-grain strengthening) resulted in such high yield strength. Simultaneously, twinning-induced plasticity (TWIP) and transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP) effect occurred within the heterogeneous nano/ultrafine grains leading to high strain hardening rate and good uniform elongation in the steel.