In this study, a commercial magnesium alloy AZ31 (Mg-3Al-1Zn-0.3Mn) sheet through a short manufacturing process was found to be ductile and highly formable in bending. Despite possessing a strong basal texture, the short-processed sheet without any annealing can be bent at a small radius, only 0.2 times its thickness in the 90° bending test. Additionally, it could withstand direct deformation by repeated folding-flattening. The in-situ microstructural characterization reveals that extension twin bands with strain localization appear in the bending area. During subsequent flattening, these twin bands underwent detwinning, reducing local strain concentrations and enabling further bending deformation. Such outstanding bend formability originated from the significant 〈a〉-type dislocation loops slipping on the prismatic crystal planes within dynamic-recrystallized grains. These grains underwent a uniform refinement to several microns in the short manufacturing process and exhibited low residual strain. The active prismatic dislocation slip within refined grains was due to its much lower relative activation stress to basal slip (CRSS_prism/ CRSS_basal of only ~1.6) owing to the effective grain boundary hardening. Furthermore, the prismatic dislocation activity was further enhanced when bypassing Al-Mn nano-particles during motion, leaving debris and loops that facilitated easy multiplication.

In this study, the effect of the processing route using a friction stir processing (FSP) method on the microstructure and mechanical behavior of a Mg-9Li-1Zn alloy was systematically investigated. In the FSP method, the odd-numbered (1st and 3rd) process directions and even-numbered (2nd and 4th) passes were alternated to distribute the strain throughout the whole processed zone uniformly. Consequently, the processed zone had a much more uniform microstructure and hardness distribution than the processed zone obtained using the conventional FSP method. Using this method, the grain size of a Mg-9Li-1Zn sheet alloy was refined from ~31 µm to ~0.21 µm with uniformly distributed α and β phases. The processed alloy exhibited a high strength-ductility synergy with an ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of 220.1 MPa and total elongation of 70.0% at a strain rate of 10⁻³ s ^{− 1}, overwhelmingly higher than those of the base metal, 155.6 MPa in UTS and 36.0% in elongation. The in-situ SEM-DIC analysis and TEM observation demonstrated that such an outstanding ductility with moderate strength is caused by grain boundary sliding, the dominant deformation mechanism of the ultra-fine-grained sample after FSP. The processing route with reverse processing direction was proven to be efficient in producing the ultrafine grain size microstructure and improving the mechanical properties of superlight Mg-9Li-1Zn alloy.