Origin of zero and negative thermal expansion in severely-deformed superelastic NiTi alloy

Abstract We have investigated the physical origin of anomalous in-plane thermal expansion (TE) anisotropy leading to invar-like behavior and negative TE in nanostructured NiTi sheets manufactured via severe cold-rolling. The roles of grain size (GS), crystallographic texture, thermally-induced phase transformation, and intrinsic (lattice level) TE of austenite (B2) and martensite (B19′) phases on the macroscopic TE behavior are addressed. It is shown that by controlling the cold-rolling thickness reduction and heat-treatment temperature the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) can be controlled in a wide range from positive ( α ∼ 2.1 × 10 −5 K −1 ) to negative ( α ∼ −1.1 × 10 −5 K −1 ) via in-plane anisotropy of TE. A very small CTE of α ∼ −5.3 × 10 −7 K −1 (invar-like behavior) in a wide temperature window of 230 K (353–123 K) is obtained at an angle of 33.5° to the rolling direction (RD) of the severely cold-rolled sheet. TEM and XRD studies show that the microstructure underlying such anomalous TE behavior consists of a mixture of B2 nano-grains and retained/residual deformation-induced martensite and that the observed anomalous TE anisotropy is due to the intrinsic anisotropic TE of residual martensite. The invar-like behavior is the result of the cancellation of the positive TE of austenite phase with the negative TE of residual martensite along 33.5° to the RD. A simple rule of mixture model incorporating the intrinsic TE of B2 and B19′ lattices and the texture coefficients of the sample is proposed which successfully captures the anomalous in-plane TE anisotropy. The discovery of high dimensional stability over a wide temperature window along with temperature insensitive non-hysteretic linear superelasticity of the severely-deformed NiTi opens up a new route for designing stable SMAs for applications in ragged environments.