A quasi-in-situ EBSD study of the thermal stability and grain growth mechanisms of CoCrNi medium entropy alloy with gradient-nanograined structure

Abstract

The thermal stability and mechanical properties of a gradient-nanograined structure (GNS) CoCrNi medium entropy alloy (MEA) processed by ultrasonic surface rolling were studied by using isothermal/isochronal annealing tests combined with quasi-in-situ electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) characterization and Vickers micro-hardness (HV) measurements. A layer by layer high-throughput investigation method was used to quantitatively study the grain growth kinetics and grain boundary evolution with different initial grain sizes, which could effectively save specimen and time costs. The grain nucleation and growth, as well as shrink and disappearance process through Σ3 coincidence site lattice boundary migration with slightly lattice rotation during annealing were directly revealed. The layer by layer grain growth kinetics and calculated activation energy indicate that the thermal stability of nano-grained top surface layer is relatively higher than that of nano-twined subsurface layer for the gradient CoCrNi MEA processed by ultrasonic surface rolling. Further analysis show that the grain boundary relaxation and dynamic recrystallization of the topmost nano-grains led to the decrease of grain boundary energy, thus improving their thermal stability. The present work provided theoretical basis for the application of CoCrNi MEA at high temperatures. Moreover, the high-throughput method on the investigation of grain stability by using gradient structure can be easily extended to other materials and it is of great significance for understanding the microstructural evolution of gradient materials.