Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten
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- 2023 (2)
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- Alloy (1)
- Epitaxial films (1)
- Hierarchical microstructure Premartensite (1)
- Incipient plasticity (1)
- Magnetic shape memory (1)
- Nanoindentation (1)
- NiMaGa (1)
- Shape-memory alloys (1)
- Twinning (1)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
Ni-Mn-Ga shape-memory alloys are promising candidates for large strain actuation and magnetocaloric cooling devices. In view of potential small-scale applications, we probe here nanomechanically the stress-induced austenite–martensite transition in single crystalline austenitic thin films as a function of temperature. In 0.5 μm thin films, a marked incipient phase transformation to martensite is observed during nanoindentation, leaving behind pockets of residual martensite after unloading. These nanomechanical instabilities occur irrespective of deformation rate and temperature, are Weibull distributed, and reveal large spatial variations in transformation stress. In contrast, at a larger film thickness of 2 μm fully reversible transformations occur, and mechanical loading remains entirely smooth. Ab-initio simulations demonstrate how an in-plane constraint can considerably increase the martensitic transformation stress, explaining the thickness-dependent nanomechanical behavior. These findings for a shape-memory Heusler alloy give insights into how reduced dimensions and constraints can lead to unexpectedly large transformation stresses that need to be considered in small-scale actuation design.
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.