Study on nucleation, growth and coarsening compositional trajectories in multicomponent Ni-Cr-Al based superalloys

The project will be conducted through cooperating with Northwestern University (NU). NU has performed comprehensive research on the precipitation kinetics of γ' precipitates in Ni-Al alloys during the aging process. This project is aimed to investigate the compositional trajectories in γ and γ' phases, temporal evolution of nanostructures, nucleation, growth and coarsening of γ' precipitates during the aging process for typical quaternary and quinary Ni-Al-Cr-R (where R is a refractory elemental addition, e.g., Ta, Nb, W, Re, Ru) superalloys utilizing high-yield atom-probe tomography (APT) and first principles calculation etc. This project has implication in understanding the mechanism for the formation and degeneration of γ' precipitates, and the evolution rule of microstructure in quaternary and quinary Ni-Cr-Al-R allloys. Through this project, young scientific talents with high level will be trained for the superalloys field.