| Abstract Scope |
In Aluminum alloys, strengthening through diffusion-driven precipitation is limited by low vacancy concentration, below one vacancy per 100 billion lattice sites at room temperature in equilibrium. Increasing vacancy concentrations by 1-7 orders of magnitude through quenching or deformation can accelerate strengthening. However, measuring vacancy concentrations below 10-7 in alloys and achieving spatial mapping are challenging. We present recent work on vacancy-mediated gradient atomic-scale microstructure analysis near grain boundaries and how we use if to investigate diffusion enhancement and the local vacancy population in a Al alloys.
X. Chen, F. De Geuser, A. Kwiatkowski da Silva, C. Liu, E. Woods, D. Ponge, B. Gault, D. Raabe, Using Spinodal Decomposition to Investigate Diffusion Enhancement and Vacancy Population. Adv. Sci.2025, 12, 2412060.
X. Chen, W. Mohammed, D. Ponge, C. Liu, D. Raabe,On vacancy clustering behavior in quenched pure aluminum, Acta Materialia, 312, 2026, 122257. |