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Interstitial oxygen embrittles titanium, particularly at cryogenic temperatures, which necessitates a stringent control of oxygen content in fabricating titanium and its alloys. Here, we propose a structural strategy, via grain refinement, to alleviate this problem. Compared to a coarse-grained counterpart that is extremely brittle at 77 K, the uniform elongation of an ultrafine-grained (UFG) microstructure (grain size ~ 2.0 µm) in Ti-0.3wt.%O is successfully increased by an order of magnitude, maintaining an ultrahigh yield strength inherent to the UFG microstructure. This unique strength-ductility synergy in UFG Ti-0.3wt.%O is achieved via the combined effects of diluted grain boundary segregation of oxygen that helps to improve the grain boundary cohesive energy and enhanced dislocation activities that contribute to the excellent strain hardening ability. The present strategy will not only boost the potential applications of high strength Ti-O alloys at low temperatures, but can also be applied to other alloy systems, where interstitial solution hardening results into an undesirable loss of ductility.

Individually, increasing the concentration of either oxygen or aluminum has a deleterious effect on the ductility of titanium alloys. For example, extremely small amounts of interstitial oxygen can severely deteriorate the tensile ductility of titanium, particularly at cryogenic temperatures. Likewise, substitutional aluminum will decrease the ductility of titanium at low-oxygen concentrations. Here, we demonstrate that, counter-intuitively, significant additions of both Al and O substantially improves both strength and ductility, with a 6-fold increase in ductility for a Ti-6Al-0.3 O alloy as compared to a Ti-0.3 O alloy. The Al and O solutes act together to increase and sustain a high strain-hardening rate by modifying the planar slip that predominates into a delocalized, three-dimensional dislocation pattern. The mechanism can be attributed to decreasing stacking fault energy by Al, modification of the "shuffle" mechanism of oxygen-dislocation interaction by the repulsive Al-O interaction in Ti, and micro-segregation of Al and O by the same cause.

One of the most potent examples of interstitial solute strengthening in metal alloys is the extreme sensitivity of titanium to small amounts of oxygen. Unfortunately, these small amounts of oxygen also lead to a markedly decreased ductility, which in turn drives the increased cost to purify titanium to avoid this oxygen poisoning effect. Here, we report a systematic study on the oxygen sensitivity of titanium that provides a clear mechanistic view of how oxygen impurities affect the mechanical properties of titanium. The increased slip planarity of Ti-O alloys is caused by an interstitial shuffling mechanism, which is sensitive to temperature, strain rate, and oxygen content and leads to the subsequent alteration of deformation twinning behavior. The insights from our experimental and computational work provide a rationale for the design of titanium alloys with increased tolerance to variations in interstitial content, with notable implications for more widespread use of titanium alloys.

Chemical short-range order (SRO) within a nominally single-phase solid solution is known to affect the mechanical properties of alloys. While SRO has been indirectly related to deformation, direct observation of the SRO domain structure, and its effects on deformation mechanisms at the nanoscale, has remained elusive. Here, we report the direct observation of SRO in relation to deformation using energy-filtered imaging in a transmission electron microscope (TEM). The diffraction contrast is enhanced by reducing the inelastically scattered electrons, revealing subnanometer SRO-enhanced domains. The destruction of these domains by dislocation planar slip is observed after ex situ and in situ TEM mechanical testing. These results confirm the impact of SRO in Ti-Al alloys on the scale of angstroms. The direct confirmation of SRO in relationship to dislocation plasticity in metals can provide insight into how the mechanical behavior of concentrated solid solutions by the material's thermal history.

Using ex-situ transmission electron microscopy and the recently developed nanoprobe diffraction (NPD) technique, we characterize a nanoindented solution treated gum metal. Lattice rotations are resolved at a 1.2 nm length-scale and shown to be continuous within the nanoindentation pit; further, it is shown that these can be accommodated by a reasonable number of geometrically necessary dislocations at a density of ∼1015/m2. We additionally provide direct evidence that dislocations within the nanoindent, rather than secondary phase nanoparticles, can serve as potent barriers to dislocation motion. We also demonstrate that plasticity in these alloys under nanoindentation can be accommodated solely by dislocation nucleation and propagation, with no competing deformation mechanisms present. Conventional transmission electron microscopy and “g•b” analysis reveal the presence of dislocations on 〈1¯11〉{110} slip systems and highly localized plastic deformation in the form of shear bands on {1¯1¯2} slip systems, similar to previously observed “giant faults”.