Aging and precipitation behavior in supersaturated Al-2%Fe alloy produced by high-pressure torsion

The aging behavior of a cast Al-2 wt.% Fe alloy processed by High-Pressure Torsion (HPT) at room temperature was studied by subsequent aging treatments at 200 °C. Observations by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) revealed that the microstructure after HPT processing reached an ultrafine-grained level with an average grain size in the Al matrix of ~120 nm. The initial eutectic structures were fragmented into particles with sizes of less than 400 nm and partially dissolved in the matrix up to a supersaturated Fe content of ~1% as confirmed by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis. The peak-age condition was achieved within 0.25 h of aging, which provides the maximum hardness of ~200 HV. Analyses by high-resolution S/TEM show that round particles of Al6Fe with sizes of ~5-10 nm and semi-coherent with the matrix are the dominant precipitates in the peak-aged condition. The hardness increases by aging for 12 h above the as-HPT-processed level of 185 HV. The dominant precipitate phase transforms to Al3Fe in the over-aged condition with a loss of coherency during growth. Enhanced precipitation kinetics was observed because of high density of lattice defects induced by the HPT processing, which were also confirmed by significant recovery in the electrical conductivity of the samples after aging.