One dimensional wormhole corrosion in metals

Yang Yang; Weiyue Zhou; Sheng Yin; Sarah Y Wang; Qin Yu; Matthew J Olszta; Ya-Qian Zhang; Steven E Zeltmann; Mingda Li; Miaomiao Jin; Daniel K Schreiber; Jim Ciston; M C Scott; John R Scully; Robert O Ritchie; Mark Asta; Ju Li; Michael P Short; Andrew M Minor

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36588-9

One dimensional wormhole corrosion in metals

Nat Commun. 2023 Feb 22;14(1):988. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-36588-9.

Authors

Yang Yang^#^{1

2}, Weiyue Zhou^#³, Sheng Yin⁴, Sarah Y Wang⁵, Qin Yu⁴, Matthew J Olszta⁶, Ya-Qian Zhang⁵, Steven E Zeltmann⁵, Mingda Li³, Miaomiao Jin⁷, Daniel K Schreiber⁶, Jim Ciston⁸, M C Scott^{8

5}, John R Scully⁹, Robert O Ritchie^{4

5}, Mark Asta^{4

5}, Ju Li^{3

10}, Michael P Short¹¹, Andrew M Minor^{12

13

14}

Affiliations

¹ National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. yang@psu.edu.
² Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics and Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. yang@psu.edu.
³ Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁴ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁶ Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA.
⁷ Department of Nuclear Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA.
⁸ National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹¹ Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. hereiam@mit.edu.
¹² National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. aminor@berkeley.edu.
¹³ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA. aminor@berkeley.edu.
¹⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. aminor@berkeley.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Corrosion is a ubiquitous failure mode of materials. Often, the progression of localized corrosion is accompanied by the evolution of porosity in materials previously reported to be either three-dimensional or two-dimensional. However, using new tools and analysis techniques, we have realized that a more localized form of corrosion, which we call 1D wormhole corrosion, has previously been miscategorized in some situations. Using electron tomography, we show multiple examples of this 1D and percolating morphology. To understand the origin of this mechanism in a Ni-Cr alloy corroded by molten salt, we combined energy-filtered four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy and ab initio density functional theory calculations to develop a vacancy mapping method with nanometer-resolution, identifying a remarkably high vacancy concentration in the diffusion-induced grain boundary migration zone, up to 100 times the equilibrium value at the melting point. Deciphering the origins of 1D corrosion is an important step towards designing structural materials with enhanced corrosion resistance.

Abstract

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