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    Microstructural Characterization of a Laser Surface Remelted Cu-Based Shape Memory Alloy
    (São Carlos : [Verlag nicht ermittelbar], 2018-4-12) da Silva, Murillo Romero; Gargarella, Piter; Wolf, Witor; Gustmann, Tobias; Kiminami, Claudio Shyinti; Pauly, Simon; Eckert, Jürgen; Bolfarini, Claudemiro
    Cu-based shape memory alloys (SMAs) present some advantages as higher transformation temperatures, lower costs and are easier to process than traditional Ti-based SMAs but they also show some disadvantages as low ductility and higher tendency for intergranular cracking. Several studies have sought for a way to improve the mechanical properties of these alloys and microstructural refinement has been frequently used. It can be obtained by laser remelting treatments. The aim of the present work was to investigate the influence of the laser surface remelting on the microstructure of a Cu-11.85Al-3.2Ni-3Mn (wt%) SMA. Plates were remelted using three different laser scanning speeds, i.e. 100, 300 and 500 mm/s. The remelted regions showed a T-shape morphology with a mean thickness of 52, 29 and 23 µm and an average grain size of 30, 29 and 23µm for plates remelted using scanning speed of 100, 300 and 500 mm/s, respectively. In the plates remelted with 100 and 300 mm/s some pores were found at the root of the keyhole due to the keyhole instability. We find that the instability of keyholes becomes more pronounced for lower scanning speeds. It was not observed any preferential orientation introduced by the laser treatment.
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    Influence of annealing on microstructure and mechanical properties of ultrafine-grained Ti45Nb
    (Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier Science, 2019) Völker, B.; Maier-Kiener, V.; Werbach, K.; Müller, T.; Pilz, S.; Calin, M.; Eckert, J.; Hohenwarter, A.
    Beta-Ti alloys have been intensively investigated in the last years because of their favorable low Young's moduli, biocompatibility and bio-inertness, making these alloys interesting candidates for implant materials. Due to their low mechanical strength, efforts are currently devoted to increasing it. A promising way to improve the strength is to tailor the microstructure using severe plastic deformation (SPD). In this investigation high pressure torsion was used to refine the microstructure of a Ti-45wt.%Nb alloy inducing a grain size of ~50 nm. The main focus of the subsequent investigations was devoted to the thermal stability of the microstructure. Isochronal heat-treatments performed for 30 min in a temperature range up to 500 °C caused an increase of hardness with a peak value at 300 °C before the hardness decreased at higher temperatures. Simultaneously, a distinct temperature-dependent variation of the Young's modulus was also measured. Tensile tests revealed an increase in strength after annealing compared to the SPD-state. Microstructural investigations showed that annealing causes the formation of α-Ti. The findings suggest that the combination of severe plastic deformation with subsequent heat treatment provides a feasible way to improve the mechanical properties of SPD-deformed β-Ti alloys making them suitable for higher strength applications.
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    The Influence of the Composition of Ru100−xAlx (x = 50, 55, 60, 67) Thin Films on Their Thermal Stability
    (Basel : MDPI, 2017-3-10) Seifert, Marietta; Rane, Gayatri K.; Oswald, Steffen; Menzel, Siegfried B.; Gemming, Thomas
    RuAl thin films possess a high potential as a high temperature stable metallization for surface acoustic wave devices. During the annealing process of the Ru-Al films, Al2O3 is formed at the surface of the films even under high vacuum conditions, so that the composition of a deposited Ru50Al50 film is shifted to a Ru-rich alloy. To compensate for this effect, the Al content is systematically increased during the deposition of the Ru-Al films. Three Al-rich alloys—Ru45Al55, Ru40Al60 and Ru33Al67—were analyzed concerning their behavior after high temperature treatment under high vacuum and air conditions in comparison to the initial Ru50Al50 sample. Although the films’ cross sections show a more homogeneous structure in the case of the Al-rich films, the RuAl phase formation is reduced with increasing Al content.
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    Mechanical Properties of ZTO, ITO, and a-Si:H Multilayer Films for Flexible Thin Film Solar Cells
    (Basel : MDPI, 2017-3-1) Hengst, Claudia; Menzel, Siegfried B.; Rane, Gayatri K.; Smirnov, Vladimir; Wilken, Karen; Leszczynska, Barbara; Fischer, Dustin; Prager, Nicole
    The behavior of bi- and trilayer coating systems for flexible a-Si:H based solar cells consisting of a barrier, an electrode, and an absorption layer is studied under mechanical load. First, the film morphology, stress, Young’s modulus, and crack onset strain (COS) were analyzed for single film coatings of various thickness on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. In order to demonstrate the role of the microstructure of a single film on the mechanical behavior of the whole multilayer coating, two sets of InSnOx (indium tin oxide, ITO) conductive coatings were prepared. Whereas a characteristic grain–subgrain structure was observed in ITO-1 films, grain growth was suppressed in ITO-2 films. ITO-1 bilayer coatings showed two-step failure under tensile load with cracks propagating along the ITO-1/a-Si:H-interface, whereas channeling cracks in comparable bi- and trilayers based on amorphous ITO-2 run through all constituent layers. A two-step failure is preferable from an application point of view, as it may lead to only a degradation of the performance instead of the ultimate failure of the device. Hence, the results demonstrate the importance of a fine-tuning of film microstructure not only for excellent electrical properties, but also for a high mechanical performance of flexible devices (e.g., a-Si:H based solar cells) during fabrication in a roll-to-roll process or under service.
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    Revealing Grain Boundary Sliding from Textures of a Deformed Nanocrystalline Pd–Au Alloy
    (Basel : MDPI, 2018-1-25) Toth, Laszlo S.; Skrotzki, Werner; Zhao, Yajun; Pukenas, Aurimas; Braun, Christian; Birringer, Rainer
    Employing a recent modeling scheme for grain boundary sliding [Zhao et al. Adv. Eng. Mater. 2017, doi:10.1002/adem.201700212], crystallographic textures were simulated for nanocrystalline fcc metals deformed in shear compression. It is shown that, as grain boundary sliding increases, the texture strength decreases while the signature of the texture type remains the same. Grain boundary sliding affects the texture components differently with respect to intensity and angular position. A comparison of a simulation and an experiment on a Pd–10 atom % Au alloy with a 15 nm grain size reveals that, at room temperature, the predominant deformation mode is grain boundary sliding contributing to strain by about 60%.
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    Effect of Alloying Elements in Melt Spun Mg-alloys for Hydrogen Storage
    (São Carlos : SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online, 2016) Rozenberg, Silvia; Saporiti, Fabiana; Lang, Julien; Audebert, Fernando; Botta, Pablo; Stoica, Mihai; Huot, Jacques; Eckert, Jürgen
    In this paper we report the effect of alloying elements on hydrogen storage properties of melt-spun Mg-based alloys. The base alloys Mg90Si10, Mg90Cu10, Mg65Cu35 (at%) were studied. We also investigated the effect of rare earths (using MM: mischmetal) and Al in Mg65Cu25Al10, Mg65Cu25MM10 and Mg65Cu10Al15MM10 alloys. All the melt-spun alloys without MM show a crystalline structure, and the Mg65Cu25MM10 and Mg65Cu10Al15MM10 alloys showed an amorphous and partially amorphous structure respectively. At 350˚C all the alloys had a crystalline structure during the hydrogen absorption-desorption tests. It was observed that Si and Cu in the binaries alloys hindered completely the activation of the hydrogen absorption. The partial substitution of Cu by MM or Al allowed activation. The combined substitution of Cu by MM and Al showed the best results with the fastest absorption and desorption kinetics, which suggests that this combination can be used for new Mg-alloys to improve hydrogen storage properties.
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    Cryogenic-temperature-induced structural transformation of a metallic glass
    (London [u.a.] : Taylor & Francis, 2016-11-30) Bian, Xilei; Wang, Gang; Wang, Qing; Sun, Baoan; Hussain, Ishtiaq; Zhai, Qijie; Mattern, Norbert; Bednarčík, Jozef; Eckert, Jürgen
    The plasticity of metallic glasses depends largely on the atomic-scale structure. However, the details of the atomic-scale structure, which are responsible for their properties, remain to be clarified. In this study, in-situ high-energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction and strain-rate jump compression tests at different cryogenic temperatures were carried out. We show that the activation volume of flow units linearly depends on temperature in the non-serrated flow regime. A plausible atomic deformation mechanism is proposed, considering that the activated flow units mediating the plastic flow originate from the medium-range order and transit to the short-range order with decreasing temperature.
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    Colloidal PbS nanoplatelets synthesized via cation exchange for electronic applications
    (Cambridge : RSC Publ., 2019) Sonntag, Luisa; Shamraienko, Volodymyr; Fan, Xuelin; Samadi Khoshkhoo, Mahdi; Kneppe, David; Koitzsch, Andreas; Gemming, Thomas; Hiekel, Karl; Leo, Karl; Lesnyak, Vladimir; Eychmüller, Alexander
    In this work, we present a new synthetic approach to colloidal PbS nanoplatelets (NPLs) utilizing a cation exchange (CE) strategy starting from CuS NPLs synthesized via the hot-injection method. Whereas the thickness of the resulting CuS NPLs was fixed at approx. 5 nm, the lateral size could be tuned by varying the reaction conditions, such as time from 6 to 16 h, the reaction temperature (120 °C, 140 °C), and the amount of copper precursor. In a second step, Cu+ cations were replaced with Pb2+ ions within the crystal lattice via CE. While the shape and the size of parental CuS platelets were preserved, the crystal structure was rearranged from hexagonal covellite to PbS galena, accompanied by the fragmentation of the monocrystalline phase into polycrystalline one. Afterwards a halide mediated ligand exchange (LE) was carried out in order to remove insulating oleic acid residues from the PbS NPL surface and to form stable dispersions in polar organic solvents enabling thin-film fabrication. Both CE and LE processes were monitored by several characterization techniques. Furthermore, we measured the electrical conductivity of the resulting PbS NPL-based films before and after LE and compared the processing in ambient to inert atmosphere. Finally, we fabricated field-effect transistors with an on/off ratio of up to 60 and linear charge carrier mobility for holes of 0.02 cm2 V−1 s−1.
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    Efficient calculation methods for the diffusion coefficient of interstitial solutes in dilute alloys
    (Basel : MDPI, 2019) Wang, Xiaoshuang; Faßbender, Jürgen; Posselt, Matthias
    In the example of oxygen diffusion in dilute ferritic iron alloys it is shown that the calculation of the diffusion coefficient can be separated into a contribution related to the migration in the interaction region between oxygen and the substitutional solute and a part related to diffusion in pure body centered cubic (bcc) Fe. The corresponding diffusion times are determined by analytical expressions using Density-Functional-Theory (DFT) data for the respective binding energies. The diffusion coefficient in the interaction region must be determined by atomistic kinetic Monte Carlo (AKMC) simulations with DFT values for the migration barriers as input data. In contrast to previous calculations, AKMC simulation must only be performed for one concentration of the substitutional solute, and the obtained results can be employed to obtain data for other concentrations in a very efficient manner. This leads to a tremendous decrease of computational efforts. Under certain conditions it is even possible to use analytical expressions where merely DFT data for the binding energies are needed. The limits of applicability of the presented calculation procedures are discussed in detail. The methods presented in this work can be generalized to interstitial diffusion in other host materials with small concentrations of substitutional solutes.
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    In Situ Room Temperature Electron-Beam Driven Graphene Growth from Hydrocarbon Contamination in a Transmission Electron Microscope
    (Basel : MDPI, 2018-5-26) Rummeli, Mark H.; Pan, Yumo; Zhao, Liang; Gao, Jing; Ta, Huy Q.; Martinez, Ignacio G.; Mendes, Rafael G.; Gemming, Thomas; Fu, Lei; Bachmatiuk, Alicja; Liu, Zhongfan
    The excitement of graphene (as well as 2D materials in general) has generated numerous procedures for the fabrication of graphene. Here we present a mini-review on a rather less known, but attractive, in situ means to fabricate graphene inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM). This is achieved in a conventional TEM (viz. no sophisticated specimen holders or microscopes are required) and takes advantage of inherent hydrocarbon contamination as a carbon source. Both catalyst free and single atom catalyst approaches are reviewed. An advantage of this technique is that not only can the growth process be imaged in situ, but this can also be achieved with atomic resolution. Moreover, in the future, one can anticipate such approaches enabling the growth of nano-materials with atomic precision.