Grain Boundary Segregation and Complexion Formation
A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Crystal Engineering".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 140
Special Issue Editors
Interests: grain boundary engineering; relaxation behavior; deformation mechanism; characterization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Improving material performances through grain boundary engineering has become a promising approach in designing materials for structural and energy applications. During the past few decades, this field has experienced rapid advancements thanks to the development of computer simulation and characterization techniques. Similar to bulk phase transformations, grain boundaries can undergo transitions, where their structure and composition change abruptly as the temperature or other thermodynamic parameters vary, called complexion transitions. Complexions refer to thermodynamically stable states of interfaces that are physically distinct from abutting bulk phases. Since the volume fraction of grain boundary complexions increases with reducing grain sizes, nanocrystalline systems (with grain sizes less than 100 nm) experience dramatic property changes as a result of complexion transition. One popular strategy to engineer grain boundaries is adding solute elements that can segregate to these interfaces. This segregation behavior can affect the chemistry of grain boundaries. Moreover, some systems may form amorphous complexions due to segregation. Both grain boundary segregation and amorphous complexion formation have been shown to significantly improve the stability of numerous nanocrystalline systems including Ni-W, Cu-Zr, and Al-Ni-Y, allowing their excellent properties of greater predictability and accessibility. Despite the importance of segregation behavior and complexion transitions, our understanding of these processes is still limited. For example, what is the segregation tendency across the full grain boundary space, and how do we characterize grain boundary segregation in detail using advanced characterization techniques? Developing complexion transition diagrams is also challenging. The present Special Issue on “Grain Boundary Segregation and Complexion Formation” may become a status report summarizing the progress achieved in the past few years.
Dr. Tianjiao Lei
Prof. Dr. Petros Koutsoukos
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- grain boundary segregation
- grain boundary structure
- grain boundary chemistry
- complexion transition
- amorphous complexions
- nanocrystalline alloys
- thermal stability
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