Abstract
One usual way to strengthen a metal is to add alloying elements and to control the size and the density of the precipitates obtained. However, precipitation in multicomponent alloys can take complex pathways depending on the relative diffusivity of solute atoms and on the relative driving forces involved. In Al–Zr–Sc alloys, atomic simulations based on first-principle calculations combined with various complementary experimental approaches working at different scales reveal a strongly inhomogeneous structure of the precipitates: owing to the much faster diffusivity of Sc compared with Zr in the solid solution, and to the absence of Zr and Sc diffusion inside the precipitates, the precipitate core is mostly Sc-rich, whereas the external shell is Zr-rich. This explains previous observations of an enhanced nucleation rate in Al–Zr–Sc alloys compared with binary Al–Sc alloys, along with much higher resistance to Ostwald ripening, two features of the utmost importance in the field of light high-strength materials.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to G. Martin for his invaluable help and advice throughout this work and for his careful reading of the manuscript. They also thank M. Athènes, D. Blavette, M. Guttmann, P. Guyot, B. Legrand, D. Seidman, C. Sigli and F. Soisson for fruitful discussions. They are indebted to C. Sigli and to Alcan for providing the heat-treated alloy samples, and to D. Seidman for sending preprints of refs 6 and 15 as far back as October 2002. They thank E. Adam for the use of his atomic visualization tool. This work was supported by the joint research program `Precipitation' between Alcan, Arcelor, CNRS, and CEA. E.C. and L.L. acknowledge financial support from Alcan.
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Clouet, E., Laé, L., Épicier, T. et al. Complex precipitation pathways in multicomponent alloys. Nature Mater 5, 482–488 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1652
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1652
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