Unveiling the Re effect on long-term coarsening behaviors of γ′ precipitates in Ni-based single crystal superalloys

In response to the increased demand for very long-term service reliability of industrial gas turbine (IGT) blades, the microstructural stability of two single crystal (SX) superalloys with different Re addition (0Re and 2Re in wt., named as alloy 0Re5Ta and 2Re5Ta) were investigated during long-term thermal exposure (>5000 h) at 900 °C, with the help of atom probe tomography (APT) and high-temperature X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. During long-term thermal exposure, the γ′ precipitates coarsened gradually in both alloys. At the same time, the γ′ precipitates became more cuboidal for alloy 0Re5Ta and nearly spherical for alloy 2Re5Ta due to the increased positive lattice misfit for alloy 0Re5Ta and the decreased negative lattice misfit for alloy 2Re5Ta. Such lattice misfit evolution was mainly attributed to the inversion of the W partitioning from γ matrix to γ′ precipitates over time. The addition of Re can effectively decrease the coarsening rate during thermal exposure. Further investigations on the coarsening kinetics confirmed the Re effect on reducing the interfacial energy and enhancing the rate-limiting effect of Cr. Additional particle size distributions (PSDs) showed a gradual transition from the initial matrix-diffusion coarsening-controlled mechanism to the interface-diffusion coarsening-controlled mechanism at prolonged time, wherein Re triggered the interface-diffusion mechanism earlier by leading to sharper interfaces. Although Re increases the magnitude of the lattice misfit in the initial microstructure, it can significantly enhance the microstructural stability of SX superalloys for IGT application. © 2022