Oxide eutectic ceramic in situ composites have attracted significant interest in the application of high-temperature structural materials because of their excellent high-temperature strength,oxidation and creep resistance,as well as outstanding microstructural stability.The directionally solidified ternary Al2O3/YAG/ZrO2 hypereutectic in situ composite was successfully prepared by a laser zone remelting method,aiming to investigate the growth characteristic under ultra-high temperature gradient.The microstructures and phase composition of the as-solidified hypereutectic were characterized by using scanning electron microscopy（SEM）,energy dispersive spectroscopy（EDS）,and X-ray diffraction（XRD）.The results show that the composite presents a typical hypereutectic lamellar microstructure consisting of fine Al2O3 and YAG phases,and the enriched ZrO2 phases with smaller sizes are randomly distributed at the Al2O3/YAG interface and in Al2O3 phases.Laser power and scanning rate strongly affect the sample quality and microstructure characteristic.Additionally,coarse colony microstructures were also observed,and their formation and the effect of temperature gradient on the microstructure were discussed.
A vacuum directional solidification with high temperature gradient was performed to prepare low cost solar-grade multicrystalline silicon （mc-Si） directly from metallurgical-grade mc-Si. The microstructure characteristic, grain size, boundary, solid-liquid growth interface, and dislocation structure under different growth conditions were studied. The results show that directionally solidified multicrystalline silicon rods with high density and orientation can be obtained when the solidification rate is below 60 μm/s. The grain size gradually decreases with increasing the solidification rate. The control of obtaining planar solid-liquid interface at high temperature gradient is effective to produce well-aligned columnar grains along the solidification direction. The growth step and twin boundaries are preferred to form in the microstructure due to the faceted growth characteristic of mc-Si. The dislocation distribution is inhomogeneous within crystals and the dislocation density increases with the increase of solidification rate. Furthermore, the crystal growth behavior and dislocation formation mechanism of mc-Si were discussed.
