Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2011
We examine the morphological evolution of faceted grain boundaries in gold during annealing. Experiments were performed on <111> oriented gold films composed of two Σ=3 related orientation variants. The boundaries between these variants initially possess a high density of finely spaced (<25 nm) facets on {112} type planes. During annealing a large proportion of these fine-scale corrugations are annihilated, and the facet distribution coarsens significantly. Through in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we directly observe this coarsening process. These results show a more complex behavior than geometric models for facet evolution would suggest and point to the need for an improved understanding of facet-junction properties and the interactions between grain boundary facets and dislocations.