Outstanding compressive creep strength in Cr/Ir-codoped (Mo(0.85)Nb(0.15))Si(2) crystals with the unique cross-lamellar microstructure

A (Mo(0.85)Nb(0.15))Si(2) crystal with an oriented, lamellar, C40/C11(b) two-phase microstructure is a promising ultrahigh-temperature (UHT) structural material, but its low room-temperature fracture toughness and low high-temperature strength prevent its practical application. As a possibility to overcome these problems, we first found a development of unique “cross-lamellar microstructure”, by the cooping of Cr and Ir. The cross-lamellar microstructure consists of a rod-like C11(b)-phase grains that extend along a direction perpendicular to the lamellar interface in addition to the C40/C11(b) fine lamellae. In this study, the effectiveness of the cross-lamellar microstructure for improving the high-temperature creep deformation property, being the most essential for UHT materials, was examined by using the oriented crystals. The creep rate significantly reduced along a loading orientation parallel to the lamellar interface. Furthermore, the degradation in creep strength for other loading orientation that is not parallel to the lamellar interface, which has been a serious problem up to now, was also suppressed. The results demonstrated that the simultaneous improvement of high-temperature creep strength and room temperature fracture toughness can be first accomplished by the development of unique cross-lamellar microstructure, which opens a potential avenue for the development of novel UHT materials as alternatives to existing Ni-based superalloys.