Migration of liquid film and grain boundary in Mo-Ni induced by temperature change

Abstract

Migration of liquid films and grain boundaries in liquid phase sintered 95Mo-5Ni (wt%) alloy occurs if the sintered specimens are heat-treated at temperatures above or below those of the initial sintering treatment. Behind the migrating boundaries, solid solutions in equilibrium at the heat-treatment temperature are deposited on the parent grains and the process is analogous to discontinuous precipitation and diffusion induced grain boundary migration (DIGM). The migration rate is varied by changing the sintering temperature while keeping the heat-treatment temperature constant; it increases parabolically with the expected composition difference between the initial and the final solid solutions. This result agrees with Hillert's proposal that the coherency strain energy in a diffusion layer in the retreating grain is the driving force. The observed migration rate and retardation effect due to the boundary curvature also agree in an order of magnitude with the coherency strain energy as the driving force. The results show that chemically induced migration of liquid films between the grains can be readily controlled experimentally and analyzed theoretically in terms of well known thermodynamic and kinetic laws.