Continuous and discontinuous precipitation in Fe-1 at.%Cr-1 at.%Mo alloy upon nitriding; crystal structure and composition of ternary nitrides

AbstractThe internal nitriding response of a ternary Fe–1 at.%Cr–1 at.%Mo alloy, which serves as a model alloy for many CrMo-based steels, was investigated. The nitrides developing upon nitriding were characterised by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, electron probe microanalysis, transmission electron microscopy and atom probe tomography. The developed nitrides were shown to be (metastable) ternary mixed nitrides, which exhibit complex morphological, compositional and structural transformations as a function of nitriding time. Analogous to nitrided binary Fe–Cr and Fe–Mo alloys, in ternary Fe–Cr–Mo alloys initially continuous precipitation of fine, coherent, cubic, NaCl-type nitride platelets, here with the composition (Cr½,Mo½)N¾, occurs, with the broad faces of the platelets parallel to the {1 0 0}α-Fe lattice planes. These nitrides undergo a discontinuous precipitation reaction upon prolonged nitriding leading to the development of lamellae of a novel, hexagonal CrMoN2 nitride along {1 ...