Recrystallization of compacted gold foil specimens

Gold foil specimens were compacted by a technique commonly used in preparing dental restorations. Their recrystallization behavior for temperatures between 100 and 300 C was followed by the associated decrease in hardness, discontinuous increase in grain size, and disappearance of X-ray line broadening. The empirical dependence of time, t, (in minutes) for 50% recrystallization on annealing temperature (in K), T, is approximately log10 t=-12.3+6.5X1,000/T, indicating a recrystallization time greater than 100 years.