A Novel Nano-Structured Die Steel with High Strength and High Thermal Stability

doi:10.1007/s40195-025-01881-7

Abstract

Abstract:

A novel oxide-dispersion-strengthened (ODS) die steel was fabricated by mechanical alloying and hot consolidation. Annealing and quench-tempering treatments both obtained an ultra-fine grain structure (mean size: 310-330 nm) with an ultra-high density of ultra-fine Y-Al-O nano-oxides (number density: ~ (1-1.5) × 10²³ m⁻³, mean size: 5.1-7.2 nm). Prolonged thermal exposure further induced the new, highly dense precipitation of ultra-fine Y-Zr-O nano-oxides. Both nano-oxides tended to be wrapped up with a B2-NiAl nano-shells. Although the quench-tempered sample showed much higher room-temperature strength (yield strength = 1393 ± 40 MPa and ultimate tensile strength = 1774 ± 11 MPa) and slightly lower elongation (elongation = 13.6% ± 0.6%) than the annealed sample (YS = 988 ± 7 MPa, UTS = 1490 ± 12 MPa, and EL = 15.2% ± 1.1%), both samples exhibited better strength-ductility synergy at room temperature and much higher thermal stabilities at high temperatures (600-700 °C) than all those conventional hot-work die steels, which makes the new ODS steel highly promising for advanced hot-work mold and die applications at high temperatures above 600 °C.

Key words: Hot-work die steel, Oxide-dispersion-strengthened, Nano-structure, Core-shelled, Thermal stability

Xinhao Li, Jieli Ma, Yiren Wang, Yong Jiang. A Novel Nano-Structured Die Steel with High Strength and High Thermal Stability[J]. Acta Metallurgica Sinica (English Letters), 2025, 38(9): 1591-1603.

Figures/Tables 10

Table 1 Real chemical composition of the new die steel

	Cr	Ni	Al	W	Zr	Ti	Y	O	C	Fe
wt%	15.00	6.10	1.80	1.68	0.57	0.11	0.27	0.34	0.07	Bal.
at.%	15.67	5.65	3.63	0.50	0.34	0.12	0.17	1.15	0.32	Bal.

Fig. 1 Schematics of the after-milling fabrication processes of the new die steel

Fig. 2 a1-a3 Inverse pole figures (IPF), b1-b3 the statistical grain size distributions, c1-c3 the GB mis-orientations and band-contrast figures, and d1-d3 the LAGB and HAGB fractions of the as-HIPed, annealed and quench-tempered samples

Fig. 3 HAADF-STEM images and the corresponding nano-particle size analyses of a the annealed (HT1), b the quench-tempered (HT2), and c the annealed + thermally-exposed (HT1 + TE1) samples

Fig. 4 HAADF-STEM images and the corresponding EDS elemental mappings of nano-particles in a the annealed (HT1), b the quench-tempered (HT2), and c the annealed and thermally-exposed (HT1 + TE1) samples

Fig. 5 a1, a2 Dark-field TEM characterization of B2-NiAl nano-phases in the annealed samples before and after the TE1 thermal exposure (TE1: 600 °C/1000 h). b FFT diffractogram showing the high coherency between B2-NiAl and the iron matrix. c The corresponding size distribution analyses of B2-NiAl nano-phases. d Predicted coarsening rate of B2-NiAl nano-phases in the annealed sample during the thermal exposure

Fig. 6 HRTEM-STEM images and the corresponding FFT diffractograms of two typical core-shell nano-structures: a1, a2 with a Y-Al-O nano-core in the annealed (HT1) sample of Fig. 4a, b1, b2 with a Y-Zr-O nano-core in the annealed and thermally-exposed (HT1 + TE1) sample of Fig. 4c

Fig. 7 Uniaxial tensile stress-strain curves of a the annealed and b the quench-tempered samples at a wide temperature range from room temperature up to 800 °C. c Room temperature UTS vs. EL data of the new ODS die steels in comparison with those of H13 hot-work die steels in open literature [58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76]

Table 2 Measured tensile properties of the annealed and quench-tempered samples at different temperatures

Method	T (°C)	YS (MPa)	UTS (MPa)	EL (%)
Annealed	25	988 ± 7	1490 ± 12	15.2 ± 1.1
	500	911 ± 24	1032 ± 8	14.4 ± 1.0
	600	641 ± 14	711 ± 9	15.5 ± 0.9
	700	281 ± 14	318 ± 12	12.0 ± 0.7
	800	166 ± 2	191 ± 1	12.6 ± 0.1
Quench-tempered	25	1393 ± 40	1774 ± 11	13.6 ± 0.6
	500	1066 ± 25	1176 ± 10	15.1 ± 1.4
	600	743 ± 9	812 ± 2	16.0 ± 1.0
	700	305 ± 2	357 ± 3	13.4 ± 0.2
	800	187 ± 4	216 ± 5	12.8 ± 0.6

Fig. 8 Stability evaluation of the annealed (HT1) and quench-tempered (HT2) samples under different thermal exposures, in comparison with a series of commercial and experimental hot-work die steels in literature. a TE1: 600 °C for 1000 h [55,83,84,85,86,87,88], b TE2: 650 °C for 100 h [55,88,89,90,91,92], and c TE3: 700 °C for 24 h [16,54,57,93,94,95]

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