Fig. 1: Additive manufacturing process utilizing size-controlled TiC-CoCrNi composite powders.
a Schematic diagram showing the process of powder assembly using CoCrNi and TiC powders. b A typical secondary electron (SE) image overlaid with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) Ti mapping, showing the morphology of powder mixture consisting of CoCrNi powders and coated TiC nanoparticles. c, e Schematics of TiC melting and reprecipitation. d The simulated temperature-time profile of a specific location within the first layer during a single-track multi-layer additive manufacturing process. The melting temperature of TiC (~3413 K27) and its precipitation temperature from solid solution (936 K, calculated from the Thermo-Calc software with the TCHEA4 database) are also marked. f The electron channeling contrast imaging (ECCI) of the single-layer and ten-layer nTiC-CoCrNi samples made by single-track laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process, revealing the complete dissolution of pre-assembled TiC nanoparticles during the first laser pulse and their reprecipitation during the subsequent laser pulses and the associated cyclic reheating. These single-layer and ten-layer samples were single-track thin walls using the same L-PBF processing parameters as the bulk sample. g, h Additive manufacturing of a turbine blade using TiC nanoparticle-decorated CoCrNi composite powders, showing a good printability. The inset in (h) is the micro-computed tomography (μ-CT) results of a cylinder taken from the blade, showing the spatial and size distributions of printing defects. The scanning strategy and sample size is shown in Supplementary Fig. 1. These schematic diagrams were created by PowerPoint software. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
