Influence of Liquid Quenching on Phase Composition and Properties of Be-Si Eutectic Alloy

Abstract

By the method of quenching from the liquid state (splat-quenching), it is first revealed the formation of mixture of metastable supersaturated substitutional solid solutions in the eutectic alloy Be-33at.% Si. Cast samples are obtained by pouring melt into a copper mold. High cooling rates during liquid quenching are achieved throw the well-known splat-cooling technique by spreading a drop of melt on the inner surface of a rapidly rotating, heat-conducting copper cylinder. The maximum cooling rates are estimated by the foil thickness. The melt cooling rates (up to 10⁸К/s), used in the work, are sufficient to form amorphous phases in some eutectic alloys with similar phase diagrams, but it is found those rates are insufficient to obtain them in the Be-Si eutectic alloy. The X-ray diffraction analysis is carried out on a diffractometer in filtered Cobalt K_a radiation. Microhardness is measured on a micro-durometer at a load of 50 g. The electrical properties, namely the temperature dependences of relative electrical resistance, are studied by the traditional 4-probe method of heating in vacuum. The accuracy of determining the crystal lattice period of the alloy, taking into account extrapolation of the reflection angle by 90⁰, is ± 3•10^-4 nm. It is found that even at extremely high rate of quenching from the melt, instead of the amorphous phase formation, the occurrence of two supersaturated substitutional solid solutions, based on Beryllium and Silicon, is revealed. This fact is established by the obtained dependences of their lattice periods values on the alloying element content. So, during the formation of metastable eutectic structure, a supersaturated with Beryllium solid solution of Silicon has period a = 0.5416 nm, and a supersaturated with Silicon solid solution of low-temperature hexagonal Beryllium has periods a = 0.2298 nm, c = 0.3631 nm. The positive role of the liquid quenching method in increasing the level of mechanical characteristics (microhardness and microstresses) in rapidly cooled Be-Si films is shown. It has been demonstrated that the difference in the atomic radii of the elements significantly affects the distortion of crystal lattices of the formed supersaturated solid solutions, and a significant value of microstresses (second-order stresses) in the Silicon lattice supersaturated with Beryllium is estimated, which, of course, leads to a significant increase in the microhardness, namely: there is an increase in microhardness in the Be-Si alloy under the conditions of applied method of quenching from the liquid state by more than 1.7 times compared to cast eutectic alloy and more than 6 times higher in comparison with the eutectoid cast Iron-Carbon alloy. The obtained polytherm of electrical resistance of the alloy under conditions of continuous heating in vacuum confirms the metastable nature of obtained new phases during quenching from the liquid state.