Universal Trend in the dynamic relaxations of tilted metastable grain boundaries during ultrafast thermal cycle

Abstract

Nonequilibrium relaxations in a multiplicity of tilted grain boundaries (GBs) subjected to ultrafast thermal driving forces are investigated by atomistic modeling. By scrutinizing the intermediate metastable microstates and their assessable activation barriers in the underlying energy landscape, we demonstrate the energetics and atomic diffusions in tilted metastable GBs are disorder-driven rather than free volume-driven. A critical transition temperature is identified, separating the nonequilibrium GBs’ evolution into a fast-varying stage, and a tuning-ineffective stage, respectively. We further discover a universal correlation between such critical temperature and GBs’ inherent structure energy, which enables predicting the tunability of metastable GBs’ kinetic and mechanical properties.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

IMPACT STATEMENT

We report a universal correlation between tilted GBs’ metastable microstates and kinetic properties during extreme thermal processing, suggesting a new strategy of manipulating interface-rich materials’ performance without changing their macroscopic textures.

KEYWORDS:

• Metastable tilted grain boundaries
• nonequilibrium processing
• activation energy spectra in energy landscape
• tunability prediction on kinetics and mechanics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Materials Research (DMR), with the grant number of 1944879.