Design of the rare-earth-containing materials based on the micro-alloying phase equilibria, phase diagrams and phase transformations

Rare-earth(RE)elements,known as“industrial vitamins”,have permeated modern lives,especially in high-tech applications.Although the RE elements possess close chemical similarities and have been treated as“one element”in the periodic table,their characteristics differ from each other.The RE microalloying effect is the crux to ameliorate the physicomechanical and thermochemical properties of materials,thereby the study of RE-related phase diagrams becomes indispensable to the design and optimization of RE-containing materials.However,in reality,the knowledge base in this area is considerably scarce compared with that of other commonly-used elements.In this work,the phase equilibria,phase diagrams,phase transformations,and some recent examples of RE-containing materials design are summarized,with which one can predict the RE solubilities,the RE precipitates,as well as the corresponding service behaviors.The attainment of enhanced materials’properties suggests that the thermodynamic rules extracted from the phase diagrams could serve as fundamental criteria for the successful development of novel RE-containing materials.

Efficient prediction of corrosion behavior in ternary Ni-based alloy systems:Theoretical calculations and experimental verification

Pourbaix diagrams are calculated to describe electrochemical processes for alloys in aqueous solution.With the multi-component differentiation of alloy systems,the construction of Pourbaix diagrams is fac-ing challenges,especially for non-single-phase alloy systems.In this study,the simultaneous construction of phase diagrams and Pourbaix diagrams were implemented for predicting the evolution of the phases in the immune and passive regions.The CALPHAD(CALculation of PHAse Diagram)approach was used to quickly access the Gibbs free energies of various phases and the chemical potential of the elements in the phases from the thermodynamic database of the Ni-Si-Al-Y system.The corrosion behavior of two typical Ni-Al-Si and Ni-Al-Y systems was investigated.Si and Y were added to Ni-based alloys to produce the solid solutions L12-Ni_(3)(Al,Si)and L12-Ni_(3)Al+Ni_(5)Y,respectively.Calculations showed that NiO and Al_(2)O_(3)make up the passive area of the Ni_(3)Al 1 alloy.The introduction of SiO_(2)and Y(OH)3 in the passive region separately helped to minimize the alloys’susceptibility to corrosion.However,Si reduced the thermody-namical possibility of NiO for mation in the passive film,and the addition of Y caused extreme galvanic corrosion.Experiments on Ni-based alloys validated the results through electrochemical corrosion.It was also discovered that the presence of Ni_(5)Y produced galvanic corrosion and that Si reduced the oxide in the passive film,causing pitting corrosion.The corrosion prediction of the quaternary alloys indicates that the solid solution of Si in Ni_(5)Y reduces the galvanic corrosion effect and the dissolution of passive film.The current work demonstrates that phase diagrams and Pourbaix diagrams may be efficiently and accurately predicted using a well-constructed thermodynamic database,which has major implications for future studies on the corrosion behavior of multi-component alloys.

On w_(∞)-Warfield Cotorsion Modules and Krull Domains

Let R be a commutative domain with 1 and Q(≠R)its field of quotients.In this note an R-module M is called w_(∞)-Warfield cotorsion if M∈WC∩P^(⊥)_(w_(∞)),where WC denotes the class of all Warfield cotorsion R-modules and P_(w_(∞))the class of all w_(∞)-projective R-modules.It is shown that R is a PVMD if and only if all w-cotorsion R-modules are w_(∞)-Warfield cotorsion,and that R is a Krull domain if and only if every w-Matlis cotorsion strong w-module over R is a w_(∞)-Warfield cotorsion w-module.