Reassessment of the effects of Ce on quasicrystal formation and microstructural evolution in rapidly solidified Al-Mn alloys

Rapidly solidified Al-Mn-Ce alloys have been reported to exhibit desirable properties due to the uniform distribution of quasicrystalline (QC) particles in an Al matrix. In this study, several ternary alloy compositions that encompassed the alloys reported in the previous reports, namely Al-6Mn-2Ce, Al-6Mn-4Ce, AI-8Mn-4Ce, Al-12Mn-2Ce and Al-10Mn-5Ce, were prepared by melt spinning and their microstructures were characterized by electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. The results are in direct contrast with the previous reports available in the literature in that the formation of QCs was only observed in the Al-12Mn-2Ce alloy; in the others, the dispersed phase was not the QC; rather, the structural and compositional information presented in this paper together with data recently published in the literature enabled a reinterpretation of the effect of Ce on rapidly solidified Al-Mn alloys. The main conclusion is that Ce favors the formation of a ternary metastable phase with approximate stoichiometry Al20Mn2Ce. This phase forms in a wide portion of the Al-rich region of the ternary phase diagram and can even coexist with the QC phase in alloys containing low amounts of Ce; in this case, the QC contains no detectable Ce by TEM/EDS, consistent with the conclusion that Ce does not favor QC formation in contrast to the previous reports. (C) 2015 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.