Strain glass state as the boundary of two phase transitions.

A strain glass state was found to be located between B2-B19’ (cubic to monoclinic) phase transition and B2-R (cubic to rhombohedral) phase transition in Ti49Ni51 alloys after aging process. After a short time aging, strong strain glass transition was observed, because the size of the precipitates is small, which means the strain field induced by the precipitates is isotropic and point-defect-like, and the distribution of the precipitates is random. After a long time aging, the average size of the precipitates increases. The strong strain field induced by the precipitates around them forces the symmetry of the matrix materials to conform to the symmetry of the crystalline structure of the precipitates, which results in the new phase transition. The experiment shows that there exists no well-defined boundary in the evolution from the strain glass transition to the new phase transition. Due to its generality, this glass mediated phase transition divergence scheme can be applied to other proper material systems to induce a more important new phase transition path, which can be useful in the field of phase transition engineering.