Combinatorial Strategies for Synthesis and Characterization of Alloy Microstructures over Large Compositional Ranges

The exploration of new alloys with desirable properties has been a long-standing challenge in materials science because of the complex relationship between composition and microstructure. In this Research Article, we demonstrate a combinatorial strategy for the exploration of composition dependence of microstructure. This strategy is comprised of alloy library synthesis followed by high throughput microstructure characterization. As an example, we synthesized a ternary Au-Cu-Si composition library containing over 1000 individual alloys using combinatorial sputtering. We subsequently melted and resolidified the entire library at controlled cooling rates. We used scanning optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction mapping to explore trends in phase formation and microstructural length scale with composition across the library. The integration of combinatorial synthesis with parallelizable analysis methods provides a efficient method for examining vast compositional ranges. The availability of microstructures from this vast composition space not only facilitates design of new alloys by controlling effects of composition on phase selection, phase sequence, length scale, and overall morphology, but also will be instrumental in understanding the complex process of microstructure formation in alloys.