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Controllable 3D morphology and growth mechanism of quasicrystalline phase in directionally solidified Al–Mn–Be alloy

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Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) morphological evolution and growth mechanisms of primary I-phase particles have been investigated in directionally solidified Al–6Mn–2.5Be (wt%) alloy at a wide range of growth rates (100–1500 µm/s). At relatively low growth rates (100–600 µm/s), the I-phase particles exhibit faceted growth with strong anisotropy, forming a hierarchical flower-like aggregate with icosahedral morphological symmetry composed of several attached irregular polyhedrons or pentagonal dodecahedrons. At higher growth rates (e.g., 1000 µm/s), the interface of the I-phases becomes unstable along the edges and corners of the pentagonal dodecahedron, thereby arousing growth perturbations. Correspondingly, a transition from faceted to nonfaceted growth occurs with increasing growth rate. Further increase of the growth rate leads to the formation of I-phase columnar dendrites’ preferential growth along the 3-fold axis. The configurations of the flower-like aggregates can be adequately illustrated by a geometrical model in terms of the perfect and elongated pentagonal dodecahedrons. A growth mechanism for the flower-like aggregates has been proposed based on the clear understanding of the 3D morphological evolution of the I-phase particles.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge the supports of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51271068, 51274077, 51274054, and U1332115, 51401044), the Key grant Project of Chinese Ministry of Education (No. 313011), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2014M551075), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. The authors wish to thank all the staff members of the 4B9A beamline of BSRF and BL14B1 beamline of SSRF for corresponding experiments and discussion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Huijun Kang, Tongmin Wang, Yiping Lu & Jinchuan Jie

  2. Department of Materials Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Xinzhong Li, Yanqing Su & Jingjie Guo

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  1. Huijun Kang
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Correspondence to Tongmin Wang.

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Kang, H., Wang, T., Lu, Y. et al. Controllable 3D morphology and growth mechanism of quasicrystalline phase in directionally solidified Al–Mn–Be alloy. Journal of Materials Research 29, 2547–2555 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2014.287

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