Abstract
Electron work function (EWF) has demonstrated its great promise in materials analysis and design, particularly for single-phase materials, e.g., solute selection for optimal solid-solution strengthening. Such promise is attributed to the correlation of EWF with the atomic bonding and stability, which largely determines material properties. However, engineering materials generally consist of multiple phases. Whether or not the overall EWF of a complex multi-phase material can reflect its properties is unclear. Through investigation on the relationships among EWF, microstructure, mechanical and electrochemical properties of low-carbon steel samples with two-level microstructural inhomogeneity, we demonstrate that the overall EWF does carry the information on integrated electron behavior and overall properties of multiphase alloys. This study makes it achievable to develop “electronic metallurgy”—an electronic based novel alternative methodology for materials design.
Highlights
Electron work function (EWF) has demonstrated its great promise in materials analysis and design, for single-phase materials, e.g., solute selection for optimal solid-solution strengthening
As a matter of fact, mechanical properties of metallic materials are largely dependent on their electron states, which are related to the atomic bond strength and spatial atomic arrangements in crystalline lattices[1,2]
Significant effort has long been made to correlate properties of materials to their electron state based on quantum m echanic[3], which is complicated for material design, especially for structural materials which consist of various microstructural constituents
Summary
Electron work function (EWF) has demonstrated its great promise in materials analysis and design, for single-phase materials, e.g., solute selection for optimal solid-solution strengthening. Such promise is attributed to the correlation of EWF with the atomic bonding and stability, which largely determines material properties. The electron density-dependent EWF can inherently reflect the atomic bond strength that determines the bulk p roperties[8] This parameter has already been demonstrated to be well correlated with the atomic bond strength[9] and other atomic properties such as electronegativity and ionization energy[4,10,11], which lays a theoretical foundation for utilizing EWF in material design. This issue has been well addressed with the help of EWF as a bridge, since EWF is related to the two mismatches and can be used as a guiding parameter to select solute element to achieve the maximum solution-strengthening effect[28]
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