Producing laminated NiAl with bimodal distribution of grain size by solid–liquid reaction treatment

The prospect of combining laminated structure design and grain size tailoring to toughen brittle materials is examined. Laminated NiAl consisting of coarse-grained layers and fine-grained layers was fabricated by solid–liquid reaction treatment of stacking Ni and Al foils. The fracture toughness at ambient temperature has been improved 2–3 times.

It is of great potential to extend this approach to other binary alloys, such as Ti–Al, Fe–Al, Nb–Al, etc., where solid–liquid reaction occurs readily at high temperature.