The ductility of La-doped rapidly solidified NiAl

NiAl intermetallics with the composition of Al-60at.%Ni{approximately}Al-69at.%Ni undergo a thermoelastic martensitic transformation with Ms ranging from 100K (Al-60at.%Ni) to 1,200K (Al-69at.%Ni) when cooling rapidly from high temperature. These alloys exhibit shape memory effects at various temperatures depending upon the composition, thus are candidates for high temperature shape memory alloy (SMA). The wide applications of melt-spun NiAl SMA have been hampered greatly by its room temperature brittleness. In order to overcome the brittleness of the alloy and develop a prospective SMA alloy, the authors report in this paper preliminary results on the improvement of ductility of NiAl doped by La via melt-spinning.