A new route to fabricate ultrafine-grained ferritic steel without severe plastic deformation is described. A low-carbon steel sheet
with a duplex microstructure composed of ferrite and martensite was cold-rolled to 91% reduction in thickness, and then annealed at
620–655 degree C. The microstructure obtained via this process was fully annealed ultrafine grains of ferrite including homogenously dispersed
cementite particles. The mean ferrite grain sizes obtained were 0.49–0.85 μm.