Ruthenium Aluminides: Deformation Mechanisms and Substructure Development

Structural and functional materials that can operate in severe, high temperature environments are key to the operation of a wide range of energy generation systems. Because continued improvements in the energy efficiency of these systems is critical, the need for new materials with higher temperature capabilities is inevitable. Intermetallic compounds, with strong bonding and generally high melting points offer this possibility for a broad array of components such as coatings, electrode materials, actuators and/or structural elements. RuAl is a very unusual intermetallic compound among the large number of B2compounds that have been identified and investigated to date. This material has a very high melting temperature of 2050?C, low thermal expansion, high thermal conductivity and good corrosion resistance. Unlike most other high temperature B2 intermetallics, RuAl possesses good intrinsic deformability at low temperatures. In this program fundamental aspects of low and high temperature mechanical properties and deformation mechanisms in binary and higher order RuAl-based systems have been investigated. Alloying additions of interest included platinum, boron and niobium. Additionally, preliminary studies on high temperature oxidation behavior of these materials have been conducted