Early-stage nucleation of manganese sulfide particle and its processing evolution in Fe—3wt.%Si alloys

Abstract

Manganese sulfide is often referred to as one of important inhibitors in grain-oriented electrical steels, which is of great importance to yield strong Goss texture. However, the early stage of nucleation for such inhibitors and their evolution during the processing has not been well understood. In present work we selected a Fe—3.12wt.%Si—0.11wt.%Mn—0.021wt.%S model system and used FE-SEM and atom probe tomography (APT) to investigate the precipitation behavior of MnS inhibitors at near atomic scale. It was found that the Si—S enriched clusters with sizes of 5—15 nm were formed close to the MnS particles. The density of inhibitors decreased after large pseudo-plane-strain compression because of the effect of dislocation motion, and then slightly increased again when sample was aged at 200°C for 48 h. The dislocations and grain boundaries can act as fast diffusion paths and assist the reemergence of Si—S enriched clusters.