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48 (2000) 30713080
www.elsevier.com/locate/actamat
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology, Taejon 305-701, South Korea and 2General Electric Corporate Research and Development
Center, One Research Circle, Niskayuna, NY 12309, USA
(Received 3 January 2000; accepted 23 April 2000)
AbstractNormal or abnormal grain growth in a model Ni-base superalloy is observed to depend on the
grain boundary structure when heat-treated in a solid solution temperature range above the solvus temperature (11508C) of the g ' phase. When heat-treated at 12008C abnormal grain growth occurs and most
of the grain boundaries are observed to be faceted by optical microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy at the intergranular fracture surface. Some of the grain boundary facet planes are expected to be singular corresponding to the cusps in the polar plot of the boundary
energy against the inclination angle, and it is proposed that if these boundary segments move by a boundary step mechanism, the abnormal grain growth can occur. When heat-treated at 13008C normal grain
growth occurs, the grain boundaries are defaceted, and hence atomically rough. Normal growth is expected
if the migration rate of the rough grain boundaries increases linearly with the driving force arising from
the grain size dierence. The correlation between the grain boundary structural transition and the growth
behavior thus appears to be general in pure metals and solid solution alloys. 7 2000 Acta Metallurgica
Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Nickel alloy; Abnormal grain growth; Grain boundary faceting
1. INTRODUCTION
At temperatures close to 0 K all crystals in equilibrium with a surrounding vapor or liquid are predicted [17] and have indeed been observed [811]
to be polyhedral with atomically at singular surface planes. At high temperatures each singular surface plane can undergo roughening transition as
predicted initially by Burton et al. [12]. At the
roughening temperature TR the planar surface is
predicted to become curved [13] and at high temperatures some grains even become spherical [14
19]. The curved surface shape thus manifests the
rough atomic structures which have been conrmed
by diraction methods [20, 21]. The growth behavior of a single crystal from melt or solution was
found to depend critically on the surface structure
[2224]. It was also proposed that both the coarsening of many grains dispersed in a liquid matrix [25,
26] and the growth of catalytic metal particles on a
substrate [27, 28] also depended critically on their
shape and hence on their surface structure.
In the early 1970s Hart [29, 30] proposed a
1359-6454/00/$20.00 7 2000 Acta Metallurgica Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 1 3 5 9 - 6 4 5 4 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 1 1 9 - 1
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grain boundary segments became rounded indicating the roughening transition. It was shown to be
reversible during temperature cycling. Although the
rounding of the planar grain boundaries in the
equilibrium shape is a direct indication of the
roughening transition as for the crystal surface, no
direct in situ observation of a rough grain boundary
at atomic scale has yet been made.
In polycrystals the grain boundary planes do
not normally correspond to those which appear
in the equilibrium shape. If the grain boundary
energy varies strongly with the grain boundary
normal (or the inclination angle) or particularly
if there are cusps in the polar plot of the grain
boundary energy s against the normal direction,
the grain boundaries can be faceted [1, 2, 32]
with zigzag shapes. The faceting of both general
and special grain boundaries have indeed been
observed in a number of metals [3740] and oxides [4143]. Such impurities and additives as O
in Ni [37, 38], Bi in Cu [4447], Te in Fe [48,
49], and CaO or SiO2 in Al2O3 [50] have been
observed to induce the grain boundary faceting. At
high temperatures some of the grain boundary facet
planes are expected to be rough corresponding to
the edges of the curved boundary segments in the
equilibrium shape [1, 2, 13, 32], and with temperature increase the defaceting transition proceeds with
an increase of the rough facet plane area. This is a
rst order phase transition unlike the roughening
transition of a singular grain boundary which can
be a higher order transition if the analogy to the
surface roughening transition holds [5153]. If the
defaceting proceeds with temperature increase until
the average boundary orientation becomes equal to
an orientation of a curved boundary segment in the
equilibrium shape, the defaceting transition is complete with a rough structure for the entire boundary
and a macroscopically curved shape. Thus in defaceting transition the singular boundary segments
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Before the heat treatments (but after the hot isostatic pressing) the grains were fairly uniform in
size ranging from about 100 to 200 mm as shown in
Fig. 1. Because the hot isostatic treatment was performed at 10508C, which is below the solvus temperature (11508C) of the g ' phase, the grain growth
was probably limited by the g '-precipitates. After
heat-treating for 5 min at 12008C (above the g ' solvus temperature) large grains appeared surrounded
by small grains which had approximately the same
size as those in the initial state. Thus a typical
AGG structure was observed as shown in Fig. 2(a).
After 10 min at the same temperature more large
grains appeared as shown in Fig. 2(b), and after 2 h
most of the small grains had disappeared and the
large grains had impinged upon each other as
shown in Fig. 2(c). The equivalent sphere diameters
of the grains were measured by an image analyzer
and their size distributions for the specimens in
Fig. 2 are shown in Fig. 3. For the specimens heattreated for 5 and 10 min about 150200 grains were
measured, but for the specimens heat-treated for
Fig. 2. The optical microstructures after heat treatments at 12008C for (a) 5 min, (b) 10 min, and (c)
2 h.
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Fig. 3. The measured distributions of the equivalent sphere diameters of the grains in the specimens
heat-treated at 12008C for (a) 5 min, (b) 10 min, and (c) 2 h.
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Fig. 4. The optical microstructures after heat treatments at 13008C for (a) 5 min, (b) 10 min, and (c)
2 h.
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Fig. 5. The measured distributions of the equivalent sphere diameters of the grains in the specimens
heat-treated at 13008C for (a) 5 min, (b) 10 min, and (c) 2 h.
Fig. 6. The typical optical micrographs of grain boundaries in the specimens heat-treated for 10 min at (a)
12008C and (b) 13008C. The arrow in (a) indicates a
faceted grain boundary.
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Fig. 9. The TEM micrographs of the grain boundaries in the specimens heat-treated for 10 min at (a)
12008C and (b) 13008C.
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