Electrically assisted processing of metallic materials has emerged as a promising paradigm for reducing deformation resistance while concurrently tailoring microstructure and service-related properties under coupled electrical, thermal, and mechanical fields. This review focuses on deformation-dominated and surface-strengthening scenarios, examining recent advances from three interconnected perspectives: fundamental mechanisms, microstructural evolution, and property responses. Available evidence suggests that Joule heating typically constitutes the dominant contribution under high-duty-cycle or near-steady-state current conditions, whereas non-thermal electroplastic effects become increasingly pronounced under short-pulse, high-current-density, and temporally decoupled loading regimes. Current assistance can accelerate recovery and recrystallization, refine grain structure, modify crystallographic texture, and alter phase transformation and precipitation kinetics. Additionally, it can relax or redistribute residual stresses while reducing flow stress and forming forces. In select hybrid surface treatments, these microstructural modifications translate into enhanced resistance to fatigue, wear, and corrosion. Nevertheless, the available evidence precludes a single universal explanation, given that current crowding, defect-selective heating, electron–dislocation interactions, and magnetic effects operate concurrently, with their relative importance varying across material systems and processing conditions. Moving forward, establishing a unified framework that links electrical parameters, defect evolution, microstructure, and performance is imperative, with focused efforts on the quantitative delineation of thermal and non-thermal contributions, predictive constitutive modeling, residual stress stability, and industrial scalability.
Li et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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