Acta Materialia 51 (2003) 665–676 www.actamat-journals.com Deformation and annealing of (011)[011 ¯ ] oriented Al single crystals N. Stanford a,* , D. Dunne a , M. Ferry b a Faculty of Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia b School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Received 21 March 2002; received in revised form 17 September 2002; accepted 17 September 2002 Abstract High purity Al single crystals of the (011)[011 ¯ ] orientation have been deformed in plane strain compression in a channel die. Deformation was carried out at a strain rate of 0.01 s -1 to true strains of 0.5 and 1.0, and at temperatures of 25, 200 and 300 °C. The as-deformed microstructure has been characterized using electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). No recrystallization was detected after deformation, and the deformation texture analysis showed that the stability of the orientation decreased with increasing temperature, contrary to reports for other orientations. Annealing was carried out for various times at 300 °C. Nucleation of recrystallization exhibited periodicity, with distinct bands of recrystallized grains forming parallel to the transverse direction. This recrystallized microstructure has been examined using EBSD. A model is proposed to account for the origin of the periodicity of nucleation and the retention of rods or cylinders of unrecrystallized material after significant annealing times.  2002 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Recrystallization; EBSD; Aluminium; Single crystal; Nucleation 1. Introduction For many years the mechanisms of slip in high stacking fault energy metals have been investigated by the deformation of single crystals. A great deal is known about the behaviour of industrially important orientations. For example, the response to plane strain compression of orientations such as the Cube {001}100, Brass {110}211, Cop- per {112}111 and S {123}634 orientations * Corresponding author. 1359-6454/03/$30.00  2002 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/S1359-6454(02)00445-7 have been catalogued by various workers [1–10]. For a summary of the current state of knowledge in this area the reader is referred to a concise review by Driver [11]. For the large amount of information known about certain orientations, there are some about which we know very little. Specifically, those orientations which do not domi- nate either the deformation or recrystallization tex- tures of commercially rolled metals have received little attention, since they do not significantly affect industrial processes. Nonetheless, these orien- tations are still of scientific interest. Since it is now known how many crystal orien-