Grain boundaries are one of the most prominent defects
in engineering materials separating different crystallites, which
determine their strength, corrosion resistance and failure.
Typically, these interfaces are regarded as quasi two-dimensional
defects and controlling their properties remains one of the most
challenging tasks in materials engineering. However, more than 50
years ago the concept that grain boundaries can undergo phase
transformations was established by thermodynamic concepts, but they
have not been considered, since they could not be observed. Dr.
Christian Liebscher, head of the group “Advanced Transmission
Electron Microscopy” and his team members at the
Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE), now found a way to
directly observe grain boundary transitions experimentally. With
colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL),
U.S., who modeled the grain boundary transformations, the
researchers published their recent findings in
Nature.
