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Title: Tailored thermal expansion alloys

Journal Article · · Acta Materialia

Current approaches to tailoring the thermal expansion coefficient of materials or finding materials with negative thermal expansion rely on careful manipulation of either the material's composition and/or the complex fabrication of composites. By contrast, we report a new principle that enables the precise control of macroscopic thermal expansion response of bulk materials via crystallographic texture manipulation and by taking advantage of anisotropic Coefficients of Thermal Expansion (CTE) in a large class of martensitically transforming materials. Through simple thermo-mechanical processing, it is possible to tailor the thermal expansion response of a single material––without manipulating its composition––over a wide range of positive and negative values. We demonstrate this principle by gradually tuning the macroscopic CTE in a model NiTiPd alloy between a positive (+14.90 × 10-6 K-1) and a negative (-3.06 × 10-6 K-1) value, simply by incrementally increasing tensile plastic deformation in the martensite phase. This surprising response is linked to the large positive, +51.33 × 10-6 K-1, and negative, -34.51 × 10-6 K-1, CTE anisotropy, at the lattice level, along the different crystal directions in martensite. Similar CTE anisotropy is also shown experimentally in CoNiGa and TiNb alloys. In a model TiNb alloy, giant macroscopic CTEs of +181 × 10-6 K-1 and -142 × 10-6 K-1 are measured. A connection between the CTE anisotropy and the martensitic transformation in these and other materials systems such as NiTi, pure uranium, and PbTiO3 is later made. It is shown that negative or positive thermal expansion crystallographic directions are connected to the crystallographic relationship between the austenite and martensite lattices, and can easily be predicted using the lattice parameters of austenite and martensite phases. Our current observations and analyses suggest that the tunability of the macroscopic CTE through thermo-mechanical processing is universal in materials––both ceramic and metals––that undergo martensitic transformations

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); US Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
Contributing Organization:
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL (United States). Coefficient of Thermal Expansion Analysis Suite (CTEAS)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396; 0909170; FA9550-15-1-0287; DMR 08-44082
OSTI ID:
1468561
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1346256
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-14-25934
Journal Information:
Acta Materialia, Vol. 102, Issue C; ISSN 1359-6454
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 81 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (5)

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Anisotropic Distribution of Phase Boundaries and its Potential Correlation with Magnetic Properties in a Sintered NdFeB Permanent Magnet journal August 2019
Giant thermal expansion and α-precipitation pathways in Ti-alloys journal November 2017
Giant thermal expansion and α-precipitation pathways in Ti-Alloys text January 2017
Routes to control diffusive pathways and thermal expansion in Ti-alloys other January 2020