Nanocrystalline nickel coating was prepared by flexible friction assisted electrodeposition technology in an additive-free Watts bath.The coating consists of massive equiaxial crystals with an average grain size of about 24 nm and exhibits a（111） preferred orientation.The differential scanning calorimetry（DSC） analysis of nanocrystalline nickel demonstrates that the peak temperature of rapid grain growth is about 285.4 °C,and the peak temperature of grain growth towards equilibrium is around 431.5 °C.The isochronous annealing results reveal that abnormal grain growth behavior is not observed in nanocrystalline nickel without sulfur-containing.The thermal stability of the deposition was improved due to its initial microstructure of the as-deposited nickel and a certain amount of annealing nano-twins with low-energy,which reduces the driving force for grain growth.Consequently,the coating shows a low residual tensile stress of about 50 MPa and a high microhardness of HV 400 at the annealing temperature of 450 °C.
