Microstructure evolution during the isostructural decomposition of TiAlN—A combined in-situ small angle x-ray scattering and phase field study

This paper describes details of the spinodal decomposition and coarsening in metastable cubic Ti0.33Al0.67N and Ti0.50Al0.50N coatings during isothermal annealing, studied by in-situ small angle x-ray scattering, in combination with phase field simulations. We show that the isostructural decomposition occurs in two stages. During the initial stage, spinodal decomposition, of the Ti0.50Al0.50N alloy, the phase separation proceeds with a constant compositional wavelength of ∼2.8 nm of the AlN- and TiN-rich domains. The time for spinodal decomposition depends on annealing temperature as well as alloy composition. After the spinodal decomposition, the coherent cubic AlN- and TiN-rich domains coarsen. The coarsening rate is kinetically limited by diffusion, which allowed us to estimate the diffusivity and activation energy of the metals to 1.4 × 10−6 m2 s−1 and 3.14 eV at−1, respectively