
Atomic diffusion is a common phenomenon in nature, and it is also a basic process to regulate the structure and properties of materials in the process of material preparation and processing. The structure and properties of metal materials can be greatly controlled at lower temperature by using the high diffusion rate of metals, so as to obtain good comprehensive properties, but the high diffusion rate will also lead to structural instability of metal materials at high temperature. many metals will have excellent properties loss, strength decline and other phenomena.
How to effectively reduce the atomic diffusion in metals and alloys and improve the stability of material structure and properties at high temperature is one of the important technical bottlenecks in the development of high performance metal materials.
"the essence of raising the heat resistance temperature of a superalloy is to effectively reduce the atomic diffusion in the alloy and enhance the high temperature stability of its structure." The researchers introduced. Past studies have shown that the atomic diffusion rate can be reduced within a certain range by proper alloying and reducing structural defects such as grain boundaries, but the reduction is limited, especially at high temperatures close to the melting point of the material. it is very difficult to reduce the atomic diffusion rate.
In 2020, the team discovered a new type of metastable structure, namely confined crystal structure, which opened up a new space for exploring the basic characteristics and new properties of solid material structure. Since then, the research team used the self-developed low-temperature plastic deformation technology to refine the grain size of supersaturated Al-15%Mg alloy sheets to less than 10 nm, and successfully obtained the confined crystal structure. Using this structure, they systematically studied the structural evolution of the alloy controlled by three kinds of atomic diffusion during the heating process.
The results show that at high temperature close to the melting point of the alloy, the confined crystal structure can effectively restrain the evolution of the three structures, and even make the melting temperature of the alloy 69K higher than the equilibrium melting point, showing an ultra-low atomic diffusion rate.