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Microstructural Evolution and Applied Performance of a Highly Undercooled Bulk Ni-5% Cu Alloy

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Abstract

Rapid solidification with a high degree of undercooling is an important method for investigating the metastable solidification of metallic materials. In this paper, we study the microstructural evolution and applied performance characteristics of bulk Ni-5% Cu alloys with degrees of undercooling ranging from 53 to 380 K by a glass fluxing technique. The microstructure homogeneity increases, and the grain refinement increases with increasing degree of undercooling. The global microstructure transforms from a coarse dendrite microstructure into a refined equiaxed grain microstructure as the degree of undercooling increases. Additionally, EDS results illustrate that the segregation less solidification with a remarkable solute trapping effect is preferentially achieved under high undercooling conditions. The compressive yield strength, Vickers hardness and bending modulus of the bulk Ni-5% Cu alloy all increase with increasing melt undercooling. Moreover, the soft magnetic properties of the alloy are modulated when the degree of undercooling changes.

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The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available from the author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos, 51871186, 52074230 and U1904214). The analyses from the Analytical & Testing Center of Northwestern Polytechnical University are appreciated. We would like to thank the director of LMSS—Prof. B. Wei—for his consistent support.

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  1. School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, 710129, China

    Jin-zhan Li & Na Yan

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JZL: Conceptualization, methodology, data curation, investigation, writing-original draft, writing-review & editing. NY: Funding acquisition, project administration, investigation, supervision, writing – review & editing.

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Correspondence to Na Yan.

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Li, Jz., Yan, N. Microstructural Evolution and Applied Performance of a Highly Undercooled Bulk Ni-5% Cu Alloy. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 32, 7162–7172 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-022-07626-2

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