Anomalous aging behavior of a Ni–Mo–Cr–Re alloy

In age hardening nickel alloys, an aging time up to a few hours is usually required to allow hardening phase to nucleate and grow particularly when the hardening kinetics are controlled by subsitutional diffusion. To reduce the aging time and therefore improve the production efficiency, deformation can be used to accelerate the aging process. We designed and studied an alloy with accelerated age hardening rates by considering various atomistic parameters so that an age-hardening material can be produced with an aging time less than 5 min without deformation. Contrary to most of the alloys, deformation decelerated the aging. The atomic resolution electron microscopy studies indicated that the hardening kinetics was related to the formation of the nano-particles and location of the doped atoms.