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Secondary phases precipitated in diffusion affected zones (DAZs) of a transient liquid phase (TLP) bonded Ni-based superalloy have a large impact on materials properties. Here we report an atomic-scale analysis of the crystal structures and elemental distributions within DAZ precipitates in a TLP-bonded single-crystal superalloy using a range of electron microscopy techniques. The predominant precipitate phases are found to be M 3 B 2 - and M 5 B 3 -type borides, where M is a mixture of transition metal elements. Atomically-resolved energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy in an aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) enabled the distributions of metal atoms within the precipitates to be determined. The observation that different metals occupy preferred sites within the crystals indicates that these phases are not uniform solid solutions, but instead are chemically ordered. Both borides contain two distinct metal lattice sites such that the phases can be described as L 2 SB 2 and L 4 SB 3 , where L and S are elements with larger (e.g., W, Mo) and smaller (e.g., Cr, Co, Ni) atomic numbers, respectively. Ordering of W and Cr is found to be particularly strong. A systematic search for stable phases within the chemical space of the W-Cr-B ternary system using the crystal structure prediction (CSP) program USPEX provided further insights into the nature of the observed chemical ordering. This combination of STEM and CSP techniques provides a direct and robust way of determining chemical features and local structures of multicomponent phases with atomic resolution even when particle sizes are too small for analysis using conventional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The thermodynamic mixing functions of MgSiO3–Al2O3 solid solutions in perovskite and ilmenite structures were modeled based on the results of ab initio calculations applied to a set of supercell structures containing 64 and 48 exchangeable sites, respectively. The sampled structures were constructed from the supercells of the end-members MgSiO3 perovskite and Al2O3 corundum by inserting double AlAl and MgSi defects, respectively, at all possible distances. From these calculations the pairwise effective interactions were derived and used to calculate enthalpy differences between successive configurations produced in Monte Carlo simulation runs. The temperature dependent enthalpies of mixing of the solid solutions were evaluated as averages over the Monte Carlo runs while the free energies of mixing were calculated with the method of thermodynamic integration. The phase equilibria of perovskite, ilmenite and garnet in the Mg–Si–Al–O system were calculated using the computed models of mixing and the standard thermodynamic properties of the end-members from the data base of Fabrichnaya (1999). The obtained activity–composition models are in good agreement with available experimental constraints, thereby showing that the thermodynamic effects of mixing in silicate solid solutions with coupled substitutions can be reliably predicted based on ab initio calculated total energies of a small set of supercell structures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]