Determination of the interface energies of spherical, cuboidal and octahedral face-centered cubic precipitates in Cu–Co, Cu–Co–Fe and Cu–Fe alloys Original Research Article

The coarsening theory of a spherical particle in a ternary alloy developed by Kuehmann and Voorhees (KV) has been generalized to any centro-symmetric particle. A classical thermodynamic analysis reveals that the generalized KV theory enables us to estimate the interface energy of a particle with a fixed shape, even if the shape of the particle is not controlled by minimization of the interface energy. Data on the coarsening of spherical, {0 0 1}-faceted cuboidal and {1 1 1}-faceted octahedral precipitates in a Cu–Co alloy, a Cu–Fe alloy, and three Cu–Co–Fe alloys with different Co and Fe contents during aging at 873–973 K have been collected by transmission electron microscopy and electrical resistivity. By applying the generalized KV theory to the experimental data, the energies of sphere, {0 0 1} and {1 1 1} interfaces have been determined. Their energies increase with increasing the Fe composition in the alloys.