High strength and ductility of ultrathin laminate foils using accumulative roll bonding and asymmetric rolling

As product miniaturization is becoming widely popular, many microparts are being produced by microforming of sheets/foils, whose strength needs to be able to maintain structural stability of the micro-components. In addition, their strength and ductility of foils generally reduce with a reduction in the thickness due to the size effect. In this paper, we report the fabrication of an aluminum laminate foil using a combined process of accumulative roll bonding (ARB) and asymmetric rolling (AR). It was found that this improves both strength and ductility. TEM results show that the laminate structures produced by ARB develop an inhomogeneous microstructure with nanoscale grains and abnormal coarsening in some grains during AR processing. Both these effects result in an improved ductility and strength. Using these rolled products, micro-cups of very small wall thickness/cup diameter ratio (1/200) have been successfully fabricated by micro-deep drawing without the need for annealing.