Enhancing strength-ductility synergy of W–Re alloy via microstructure and texture evolution during hot rotary swaging and annealing

Tungsten-rhenium (W–Re) alloys are key structural materials for nuclear and other extreme environments, but they often exhibit a significant imbalance between strength and ductility after severe plastic deformation. In this work, the W-25Re alloy was prepared by hot rotary swaging and then annealed at various temperatures to investigate the evolution of microstructure, texture, slip activity, and mechanical properties. The results show that the hot rotary swaging introduces a highly strained microstructure with elongated grains, high dislocation density, subgrain, and strong deformation texture, which provides high strength but limits ductility. Annealing induces a clear transition from recovery dominated to recrystallization dominated microstructural evolution with increasing temperature. At 1300°C, recovery leads to dislocation rearrangement and polygonization, retaining a high fraction of low angle grain boundaries (LAGBs) and preserving deformation-induced favorable orientations, while texture weakening remains limited. This recovered microstructural state improves orientation diversity and strain compatibility, leading to enhanced strain accommodation without eliminating dislocation strengthening. At higher annealing temperatures, extensive recrystallization removes favorable orientations, shifts Schmid factor (SF) distributions toward lower values, and suppresses effective slip activity despite reduced texture intensity. As a result, an optimal strength-ductility synergy is achieved after annealing at 1300°C, where the alloy exhibits a high ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 1746 MPa together with an elongation of 19.1% at room temperature due to retained substructure and moderated texture weakening. These findings demonstrate that controlling recovery after hot rotary swaging, combined with moderate texture weakening, offers an effective strategy to achieve superior strength-ductility synergy in W–Re alloys.