Rapid Quenching
Rapid quenching has long been of interest in making alloy microstructures far from equilibrium, notably metallic glasses. In the group we have melt-spinner which can operate in controlled atmosphere. This is used to make rapidly quenched ribbons, 15 to 50 microns thick and 0.5 to 3 mm wide, at a quench rate of up to 10 million K/s. Current work focuses on producing Al-based metallic glasses for a variety of projects; these range from the production of nanophase partially crystalline composites by devitrification to the study of heterogeneous nucleation on embedded inoculant particles.
Micrograph of TiB2 particle embedded in an amorphous matrix showing nucleation of Al crystals.
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