A study of precipitation in a Cu-15 wt %Ni-8 wt %Sn alloy

A study of precipitation in a Cu-15 wt.% Ni-8 wt.% Sn alloy (C72900) showed that the growth kinetics of the spinodal decomposition is very slow at the early stage of phase separation and then increased considerably at the coarsening stage. The activation energy for thermally-activated coarsening of the wave-length of the composition modulation was determined to be 165 kJ mol exp -1 . The decomposed phase showed a randomly oriented equiaxed shape at the early stages, which changes into an elongated one aligned in the < 100 > directions during the coarsening process.