Relationship Between Grain Boundary Segregation of Antimony and Temper Embrittlement in Titanium-Doped Nickel-Chromium Steel Original Research Article

The antimony segregation at grain boundary was observed and the temper embrittlement in titanium-doped nickel-chromium steel was analyzed. It is concluded that the antimony segregation at grain boundary is nonequilibium and the kinetics of temper embrittlement agrees well with those of nonequilibrium antimony segregation at grain boundary. Besides, the mechanism of nonequilibrium antimony segregation at grain boundary proved to be the most satisfactory one among the existing mechanisms to interpret the antimony-induced embrittlement kinetics in the nickel-chromium steel. Based on these, the activation energy and frequency factor of diffusion of antimony-vacancy complexes were obtained according to the concept of critical time in nonequilibrium grain boundary segregation theory.