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Magnetic shape memory alloys have been examined intensively due to their multifunctionality and multitude of physical phenomena. For both areas, epitaxial films are promising since the absence of grain boundaries is beneficial for applications in microsystems and they also allow to understand the influence of a reduced dimension on the physical effects. Despite many efforts on epitaxial films, two particular aspects remain open.
First, it is not clear how to keep epitaxial growth up to high film thickness, which is required for most microsystems.
Second, it is unknown how the microstructure of premartensite, a precursor state during the martensitic transformation, manifests in films and differs from that in bulk.
Here, we focus on micrometer-thick austenitic Ni-Mn-Ga films and explain two distinct microstructural features by combining high-resolution electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction methods. First, we identify pyramid-shaped defects, which originate from {1 1 1} growth twinning and cause the breakdown of epitaxial growth. We show that a sufficiently thick Cr buffer layer prevents this breakdown and allows epitaxial growth up to a thickness of at least 4 μm. Second, premartensite exhibits a hierarchical microstructure in epitaxial films. The reduced dimension of films results in variant selection and regions with distinct premartensite variants, unlike its microstructure in bulk.
The typical experimental conditions inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM), such as ultra-high vacuum, high-energy electron irradiation, and surface effects of ultrathin TEM specimens, can be the origin of unexpected microstructural changes compared with that of bulk material during in situ thermal-annealing experiments. In this paper, we report on the microstructural changes of a Fe–15%Si alloy during in situ TEM annealing, where, in its bulk form, it exhibits an ordering transformation from D03 to B2 at 650 °C. Using a heating-pot type double tilt holder with a proportional–integral–differential control system, we observed the precipitation of α-Fe both at the sample surface and inside the sample. Surface precipitates formed via surface diffusion are markedly large, several tens of nm, whereas precipitates inside the specimen, which are surrounded by Fe-poor regions, reach a maximum size of 20 nm. This unexpected microstructural evolution could be attributed to vacancies on Si sites, which are induced due to high-energy electron irradiation before heating, as well as enhanced thermal diffusion of Fe atoms.
Grain-boundary degradation via liquid-metal embrittlement (LME) is a prominent and long-standing failure process in next generation advanced high-strength steels. Here we reveal, well ahead of the crack tip, the presences of nano-scale grains of intermetallic phases in Zn-infiltrated but uncracked grain boundaries with scanning- and 4D transmission electron microscopy. Instead of the often-reported Znrich Fe-Zn intermetallics, the nano-scale phase in the uncracked infiltrated grain boundaries is identified as the G-phase, and its presence reveals the local enhancement of strain heterogeneities in the grain boundary network. Based on these observations, we argue that intermetallic phase formation is not occurring after cracking and subsequent liquid Zn infiltration but is instead one of the primary nanoscopic drivers for grain-boundary weakening and crack initiation. These findings shift the focus of LME from micro- and meso-scale crack investigations to the very early stages immediately following Zn diffusion, after which secondary phase nucleation and growth emerge as the root-cause for failure.
The crystal structure of martensite in Cu-27at.%Zn-9.0 at.%Al alloy has been studied by using sphericalaberration-corrected high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) and geometrical phase analysis (GPA) to examine possible changes in atomic rearrangements during martensitic transformation of this ternary system. Observation along [100]M zone axis is suitable for examining a chemical order of the martensite, and showed that, despite the non-stoichiometry of the alloy, atomic columns containing
Al atoms are imaged and distinguished from the others. On the other hand, observation along [010]M zone axis directly revealed that the parent and martensitic phases possess L21 and 18R (21) structures, respectively. These observations suggested that the martensite retained the local chemical order of the parent phase without shuffling before and after the transformation. GPA revealed that the interface between the two phases was coherent with tilting of the basal plane approximately 6◦ across the boundary, which makes otherwise large inclination small during the martensitic transformation.
Lamellar eutectics are known to evidence plastic shear in otherwise brittle intermetallics, if the lamella spacing is small enough. Here we pursue this idea of confined plasticity in intermetallics further and demonstrate room-temperature shear-deformation in a two-phase CuAl 2 -CuAl intermetallic nano- composite. The presence of a phase with a 3-fold symmetry is also revealed after deformation. Simula- tion of transmission electron microscopy images shows this to be monoclinic CuAl. These observations are made in the deformation zone underneath locations of nanoindents, of which the force-displacement curves exhibit an unusual response of continuously increasing pop-in sizes with load.
This work presents strong evidence for structural damage accumulation as a function of shear strain admitted by shear bands in a Zr-based bulk metallic glass. Analyzing the shear-band structure of shear- band segments that experienced shear strains covering four orders of magnitude with high-angle annular dark field transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) reveals strongly scattered data with on overall trend of increasing local volume dilatation with increasing shear strain. Locally, however, a variety of trends is observed, which underlines the strong heterogeneity of structural damage in shear bands in metallic glasses.