Nickel‐based single‐crystal superalloys significantly enhance creep rupture strength and high‐temperature stability due to their structural advantage of eliminating grain boundaries. Plastic strain can be induced in the single‐crystal superalloys during investment casting and cooling, which provides a sufficient driving force for recrystallization during subsequent postcasting heat treatment. In this study, a single‐crystal superalloy is stretched along the primary dendrite growth direction (parallel to 001) with different plastic strains to simulate the deformation induced during investment casting. X‐ray Laue diffraction and transmission electron microscopy are performed to study the structural evolutions in the single‐crystal superalloys during tensile deformation and subsequent annealing. The slip system is activated in the single‐crystal superalloy during tension along 001 direction. A nonuniform distribution of local orientation gradient is observed in the deformed specimens, where slip steps and slip bands are detected with a high kernel averaged misorientation (KAM) ranging from 0.5° to 1°. After annealing treatment, the mean KAM angle is still large but the number fraction of the KAM exceeding 0.5° is reduced when compared to the corresponding deformed state. The relative lattice rotation induced by the plastic deformation is unchanged after annealing treatment.
Jin et al. (2026) studied this question.