Excellent ductility is crucial not only for shaping but also for strengthening metals and alloys. The ever most widely used eutectic alloys are suffering from the limited ductility and losing competitiveness among advanced structural materials. Here we report a distinctive concept of phase-selective recrystallization to overcome this challenge for eutectic alloys by triggering the strain hardening capacity of the duplex phases completely. We manipulate the strain partitioning behavior of the two phases in a eutectic high-entropy alloy (EHEA) to obtain the phase-selectively recrystallized microstructure with a fully recrystallized soft phase embedded in the skeleton of a hard phase. The resulting microstructure fully releases the strain hardening capacity in EHEA by eliminating the weak boundaries. Our phase-selectively recrystallized EHEA achieves a high ductility of ∼35% uniform elongation with true stress of ∼2 GPa. This concept is universal for various duplex alloys with soft and hard phases and opens new frontiers for traditional eutectic alloys as high-strength metallic materials.© 2022. The Author(s).

High-entropy alloys (HEAs) can have either high strength or high ductility, and a simultaneous achievement of both still constitutes a tough challenge. The inferior castability and compositional segregation of HEAs are also obstacles for their technological applications. To tackle these problems, here we proposed a novel strategy to design HEAs using the eutectic alloy concept, i.e. to achieve a microstructure composed of alternating soft fcc and hard bcc phases. As a manifestation of this concept, an AlCoCrFeNi2.1 (atomic portion) eutectic high-entropy alloy (EHEA) was designed. The as-cast EHEA possessed a fine lamellar fcc/B2 microstructure, and showed an unprecedented combination of high tensile ductility and high fracture strength at room temperature. The excellent mechanical properties could be kept up to 700 degrees C. This new alloy design strategy can be readily adapted to large-scale industrial production of HEAs with simultaneous high fracture strength and high ductility.

Many traditional approaches for strengthening steels typically come at the expense of useful ductility, a dilemma known as strength-ductility trade-off. New metallurgical processing might offer the possibility of overcoming this. Here we report that austenitic 316L stainless steels additively manufactured via a laser powder-bed-fusion technique exhibit a combination of yield strength and tensile ductility that surpasses that of conventional 316L steels. High strength is attributed to solidification-enabled cellular structures, low-angle grain boundaries, and dislocations formed during manufacturing, while high uniform elongation correlates to a steady and progressive work-hardening mechanism regulated by a hierarchically heterogeneous microstructure, with length scales spanning nearly six orders of magnitude. In addition, solute segregation along cellular walls and low-angle grain boundaries can enhance dislocation pinning and promote twinning. This work demonstrates the potential of additive manufacturing to create alloys with unique microstructures and high performance for structural applications.

Strengthening materials via conventional "top-down" processes generally involves restricting dislocation movement by precipitation or grain refinement, which invariably restricts the movement of dislocations away from, or towards, a crack tip, thereby severely compromising their fracture resistance. In the present study, a high-entropy alloy AlCrCoFeNi is produced by the laser powder-bed fusion process, a "bottom-up" additive manufacturing process similar to how nature builds structures, with the microstructure resembling a nano-bridged honeycomb structure consisting of a face-centered cubic (fcc) matrix and an interwoven hexagonal net of an ordered body-centered cubic B2 phase. While the B2 phase, combined with high-dislocation density and solid-solution strengthening, provides strength to the material, the nano-bridges of dislocations connecting the fcc cells, i.e., the channels between the B2 phase on the cell boundaries, provide highways for dislocation movement away from the crack tip. Consequently, the nature-inspired microstructure imparts the material with an excellent combination of strength and toughness.© 2024. This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.

A model of coupling macro finite volume method (FVM) and cellular automata (CA) is proposed in this paper to explore the columnar-to-equiaxed transition (CET) during selective laser melting (SLM) of rare earth magnesium alloy. Taking into account the impact of recoil pressure and Marangoni convection on the molten pool temperature field, the grain structure is simulated. As suggested by the simulation results, with the undissolved Zr serving as heterogeneous nucleation sites, the liquid undercooled layer under the combined action of forced cooling, the temperature gradient and the liquid solute concentration gradient leads to CET. While considering the dissolution of Zr in magnesium matrix, the results demonstrate that the dissolution of element Zr is effective in significantly inhibiting the growth of columnar crystals and ensuring the sufficient constitutional supercooling (CS) required for nucleation. In addition, to raise the preheating temperature contributes to enhancing the outcome of nucleation and incresing the grain size. Invoking the interdependence model (IM), with the cooling rate gradually increasing in the SLM process of magnesium alloy, the nucleation-free zone (NFZ) reduces by decreasing the solute diffusion layer in the front of the solid/liquid (SL) interface and the temperature gradient. The reduction in temperature gradient can promote undercooling for nucleation and facilitate the development of equiaxed crystals. The simulation results are qualitatively verified as highly consistent through experimentation.

Preventing columnar grain formation during additive manufacturing has become a significant challenge. Columnar grains are generally regarded as unfavourable as their presence can impart solidification defects and mechanical property anisotropy, however, the thermal conditions experienced during additive manufacturing make columnar grains difficult to avoid. In this work the thermal conditions during solidification (cooling rate, temperature gradients) are characterised during wire based additive manufacturing. For the selection of deposition conditions that favour equiaxed grain formation, the role of alloy constitution is explored in three classical alloy design regimes: an alloy containing no grain refiners (Ti-6Al-4V); an alloy only containing grain refining solutes (Ti-3Al-8V-6Cr-4Mo-4Zr); and an alloy containing both grain refining solute and nucleant particles (Ti-3Al-8V-6Cr-4Mo-4Zr + La2O3). Substantial refinement and equiaxed grain formation is achieved in the latter case which is attributed to beta-Ti nucleation on La2O3. However, the thermal environment is dynamic during additive manufacturing and equiaxed grain formation is only achievable when temperature gradients decrease sufficiently to permit constitutional supercooling. (C) 2019 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

As a revolutionary industrial technology, additive manufacturing creates objects by adding materials layer by layer and hence can fabricate customized components with an unprecedented degree of freedom. For metallic materials, unique hierarchical microstructures are constructed during additive manufacturing, which endow them with numerous excellent properties. To take full advantage of additive manufacturing, an in-depth understanding of the microstructure evolution mechanism is required. To this end, this review explores the fundamental procedures of additive manufacturing, that is, the formation and binding of melt pools. A comprehensive processing map is proposed that integrates melt pool energy- and geometry-related process parameters together. Based on it, additively manufactured microstructures are developed during and after the solidification of constituent melt pool. The solidification structures are composed of primary columnar grains and fine secondary phases that form along the grain boundaries. The post-solidification structures include submicron scale dislocation cells stemming from internal residual stress and nanoscale precipitates induced by intrinsic heat treatment during cyclic heating of adjacent melt pool. Based on solidification and dislocation theories, the formation mechanisms of the multistage microstructures are thoroughly analyzed, and accordingly, multistage control methods are proposed. In addition, the underlying atomic scale structural features are briefly discussed. Furthermore, microstructure design for additive manufacturing through adjustment of process parameters and alloy composition is addressed to fulfill the great potential of the technique. This review not only builds a solid microstructural framework for metallic materials produced by additive manufacturing but also provides a promising guideline to adjust their mechanical properties.

Keyhole porosity is a key concern in laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF), potentially impacting component fatigue life. However, some keyhole porosity formation mechanisms, e.g., keyhole fluctuation, collapse and bubble growth and shrinkage, remain unclear. Using synchrotron X-ray imaging we reveal keyhole and bubble behaviour, quantifying their formation dynamics. The findings support the hypotheses that: (i) keyhole porosity can initiate not only in unstable, but also in the transition keyhole regimes created by high laser power-velocity conditions, causing fast radial keyhole fluctuations (2.5-10 kHz); (ii) transition regime collapse tends to occur part way up the rear-wall; and (iii) immediately after keyhole collapse, bubbles undergo rapid growth due to pressure equilibration, then shrink due to metal-vapour condensation. Concurrent with condensation, hydrogen diffusion into the bubble slows the shrinkage and stabilises the bubble size. The keyhole fluctuation and bubble evolution mechanisms revealed here may guide the development of control systems for minimising porosity.© 2022. The Author(s).