Effect of high-rate annealing on microstructure, martensitic transformation and shape memory behavior of TiNiCu melt-spun ribbons

Abstract The amorphous rapidly quenched quasi-binary TiNi–TiCu alloys containing 30–38 at.% Cu were crystallized by isothermal annealing at 500 °C for 300 s and by exposing to short electric pulse with a duration of 10 ms to study the effect of the annealing rate on their properties. The results obtained showed that electropulse crystallization fundamentally changed the microstructure of the alloys due to almost completely hindering the formation of brittle Ti-Cu phases. This leads to a significant increase in the enthalpy of the martensitic transformation and a considerable shift of the transformation range towards higher temperatures. It was found that reducing the crystallization time dramatically increases the plasticity and shape memory effect of the alloys.