Shigeto Yamasaki

Creep strengthening by lath boundaries in 9Cr ferritic heat-resistant steel

Abstract The interactions between dislocations and lath boundaries in Grade 91 steel were observed by an in situ transmission electron microscopy tensile test at 973 K. Dislocations glided slowly and bowed out in a martensite lath interior. The ends of the dislocation were connected to the lath boundaries. In a tempered specimen, the pinning stress caused by the lath boundary was estimated to be >70 MPa with a lath width of 0.4 μm. In crept specimens, lath coarsening reduced the pinning effect.

Controlled Growth of Large-Area Uniform Multilayer Hexagonal Boron Nitride as an Effective 2D Substrate

Multilayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is an ideal insulator for two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides, because h-BN screens out influences from surroundings, allowing one to observe intrinsic physical properties of the 2D materials. However, the synthesis of large and uniform multilayer h-BN is still very challenging because it is difficult to control the segregation process of B and N atoms from metal catalysts during chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth. Here, we demonstrate CVD growth of multilayer h-BN with high uniformity by using the Ni-Fe alloy film and borazine (B3H6N3) as catalyst and precursor, respectively. Combining Ni and Fe metals tunes the solubilities of B and N atoms and, at the same time, allows one to engineer the metal crystallinity, which stimulates the uniform segregation of multilayer h-BN. Furthermore, we demonstrate that triangular WS2 grains grown on the h-BN show photoluminescence stronger than that grown on a bare SiO2 substrate. The PL line width of WS2/h-BN (the minimum and mean widths are 24 and 43 meV, respectively) is much narrower than those of WS2/SiO2 (44 and 67 meV), indicating the effectiveness of our CVD-grown multilayer h-BN as an insulating layer. Large-area, multilayer h-BN realized in this work will provide an excellent platform for developing practical applications of 2D materials.