Part II – February 1969 - Papers - The Characteristics of Spontaneous Martensite in Thin Foils of Ti-Cr Alloys

Transmission electron microscopy techniques hare been used to study the spontaneous marfensite phase that forms during the thinning of Ti-Cr alloys. The structure of this phase has been found to differ. from the hcp martensite and has been identified as a clisforted fcc lattice. The spordaneous marlensile in this system is interpreted as a metastable isomorph of the equilibriunz TiCr, phase. WHEN thin-foil specimens for transmission electron microscopy were prepared from metastable alloys of the Ti-Cr system, a spontaneous transformation occurred' when the foils contained the untrans-formed 0 phase or two-phase mixtures of the 0 and w phases. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship that exists between the crystal structure of the spontaneous product and that of the matrix. The differences between the martensite transformation that occurs in the bulk material and the spontaneous reaction that occurs during the preparation of thin foils are compared with the observations that have been reported for similar phenomena in a commercial titanium alloy.' A spontaneous reaction that exhibits characteristics similar to a martensite transformation has been reported to occur in thin foils prepared from the retained metastable structures of several alloy systems.1'3"7 ~ull~ observed such a spontaneous reaction in 0 brass and attributed the apparent increase in the martensite transformation temperature to a decrease in the non-chemical free energy associated with bulk strain energy. He also showed that the spontaneous product did not have a specific habit plane, but that its orientation relationships to the parent matrix were dependen on the thickness of the transforming region. It has also been pointed out by Breedis6 that in thin films the absence of the constraints imposed by a bulk matrix can cause different requirements for the martensite plate interface and lattice distortion which is reflected bv a dependence of the transformation mechanism on the specimen geometry. In the case of the spontaneous reaction reported for Au-Zn alloys7 a definite habit plane was determined and shown to correspond with the habit plane calculated on the basis of the Bowles and Mackenzie crystallographic theory of the martensite transformation.'- lo EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE A series of titanium alloys containing 5.5, 5.9, 6.4: 7.6, 8.0, 11.3, and 18.7 at. pct Cr were prepared from high-purity (iochrome) chromium and iodide-grade titanium by levitation melting. The experimental procedure used for sectioning the alloys and for thin-foil preparation has been reported in an earlier paper.' X-ray diffraction patterns were obtained using a 114-mm Debye-Scherrer camera and Cu-Ka radiation. In order to minimize fluorescent radiation from the specimen, a strip of aluminum foil 0.002 in. thick was placed in contact with the X-ray film. After a specimen was removed from the camera: an additional X-ray experiment was performed, to insure that no spurious lines were obtained due to the presence of the aluminum foil. The interstitial impurity analysis for the alloys used in this study was as follows: oxygen, 100 ppm: hydrogen, 30 ppm: nitrogen, 28 ppm. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS Electron diffraction patterns were obtained from several individual crystals of the spontaneous marten-