Evolution of grain-boundary ensembles in nickel during boundary migration induced by copper diffusion

The effect of copper diffusion-induced grain-boundary migration on the structure and grain-boundary ensemble in nickel is studied to show that during migration, individual regions of random grain boundaries acquire misorientations corresponding to special boundaries of the Σ3 type. This leads to the formation in nickel of a grain-boundary ensemble with a content of special grain boundaries exceeding 70%.