Stress‐Induced Phase Transformation in Single Crystal Titanium Carbide

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Single‐crystal ingots of TiC were cut into wafer substrates for heteroepitaxial growth of SiC films. During wafer sectioning by abrasive machining, a subsurface damage zone was created. TEM observations of the damage zone revealed a stress‐induced martensitic transformation from cubic TiC to rhombohedral and hexagonal structures, both involving an 8.0% contraction normal to the {111} habit plane and a shear along . It is proposed that the transformed structure is governed by the Ti sublattice, and that carbon atoms remain in octahedral coordination. The transformed phase coarsened to form a lamellar structure consisting of periodic quadlayer twins. The twins imparted hexagonal symmetry, and the lamellar phase was designated 8H. A strain gradient tensor was employed to describe the mapping of atom coordinates between the two phases. The present account constitutes the first report of this transformation in TiC.