An abnormal meta-stable nanoscale eutectic reaction revealed by in-situ observations

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2018-11-14
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Zhou, Lin
Meng, Fanqiang
Zhou, Shihuai
Sun, Kewei
Kim, TaeHoon
Ott, Ryan
Napolitano, Ralph
Kramer, Matthew
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Napolitano, Ralph
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Ames National Laboratory

Ames National Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated national laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), operated by and located on the campus of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa.

For more than 70 years, the Ames National Laboratory has successfully partnered with Iowa State University, and is unique among the 17 DOE laboratories in that it is physically located on the campus of a major research university. Many of the scientists and administrators at the Laboratory also hold faculty positions at the University and the Laboratory has access to both undergraduate and graduate student talent.

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Materials Science and Engineering
Materials engineers create new materials and improve existing materials. Everything is limited by the materials that are used to produce it. Materials engineers understand the relationship between the properties of a material and its internal structure — from the macro level down to the atomic level. The better the materials, the better the end result — it’s as simple as that.
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Ames National LaboratoryMaterials Science and Engineering
Abstract

Phase selection and growth of materials far from equilibrium provides fertile ground for novel phases and morphologies since a multitude of different pathways may be energetically accessible. In this study, a complex metastable devitrification of Al60Sm11 (ε-phase) from its amorphous precursor is discovered using a combination of in-situ high-energy X-ray diffraction (HEXRD), providing insight into the average bulk behavior, and in-situ aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, revealing the atomic scale mechanisms of growth and their dynamics. We have found that non-equilibrium chemical partitioning disrupts the nominal planer growth by formation of nanoscale Al enriched regions inhomogeneously segregated at the ε/glass interface, to locally balance the compositionally dependent driving force and the associated diffusional burden imposed on its grain growth. These Al-rich regions form fcc-Al-rich nanocrystallites epitaxially with the ε-phase, modifying ε/glass interface mobility and creating a crenulated growth front. This new mechanism offers a pathway for fabricating alloy structures with nanoprecipitate dispersions through a meta-stable phase transition.

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