A study of grain boundary sliding in copper with and without an addition of phosphorus

Copper will be used as a corrosion barrier in the storage of high level nuclear waste. In order to improve the creep fracture properties of the material it will contain 30–50 ppm of phosphorus, OFP copper as opposed to OF copper without P. It has been suggested that the phosphorus impedes grain boundary sliding in copper and recently a quantitative theory based on this idea has shown that there is no risk for creep-brittle fracture of OFP copper under waste storage conditions. In order to verify the basis of this theory grain boundary sliding has been investigated in copper with and without a P addition. The method has been to examine intentionally scratched surfaces of tensile specimens tension tested to plastic strains of 1%, 2% and 4% at 150 and 200 °C. After testing specimen surfaces have been examined in SEM and sliding distances have been measured as in-surface displacement of scratches. The results have been plotted as distribution functions where the fraction of slides smaller than a given value is plotted versus sliding distance. The result is that in most cases the distribution functions for OF and OFP copper overlap. In a small number of cases there is a tendency that less sliding has occurred in OFP copper. The overall conclusion is however that although there may be a slight difference between the materials with regard to grain boundary sliding it is not large enough to explain the observed difference in creep brittleness. Tension tests to fracture in the temperature range 100–200 °C show that the tensile properties of the two copper qualities are more or less identical until intergranular cracking starts in the OF copper. Then the flow stress decreases in comparison with OFP. It is suggested that at least part of the observed differences in creep strength between the two coppers may be due to the effect of intergranular cracking.