A kinetic Monte Carlo study of coarsening resistance of novel core/shell precipitates

Abstract A novel approach towards the design of coarsening-resistant nanoprecipitates in structural alloys was investigated by kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulation. The approach is motivated by recent experimental results in Cu–Nb–W alloys showing that room temperature ion irradiation resulted in W nanoprecipitation, leading to exceptional stability of W-rich-core/Nb-rich-shell nanoprecipitates formed following thermal annealing (Zhang et al., 2013 [11]). Here, image simulations of atomically resolved scanning transmission electron microscopy are performed to establish that these W nanoprecipitates are highly ramified. Thermal precipitate coarsening in an A–B–C ternary alloy similar to Cu–Nb–W is then studied by KMC simulations, where the highly immiscible and refractory C solute atoms are initially distributed into fractal nanoprecipitates, or cores, which become coated by a shell of B atoms during elevated temperature annealing. Compared with nanoprecipitates generated by compact C cores, the ramified nanoprecipitates result in exceptionally high trapping efficiency of B solute atoms during thermal coarsening, and the efficiency increases with the cluster size. The KMC results are analyzed and rationalized by noting that, owing to the Gibbs–Thomson effect, when the curvatures of the shell of the precipitates are zero or negative, the microstructure is coarsening-resistant. Such morphology can be realized by facets, or by dynamic balance within positive, negative and zero curvatures.