Recovery facilitated by interphase boundary motion circumvents recrystallization in superalloy single crystals

Dislocation recovery lowering the driving force for recrystallization would be able to suppress the latter in Ni-based superalloy single crystals, but was believed unlikely due to their low stacking-fault energy. Defying this traditional wisdom, here we show that efficient recovery can be realized once the γ′-precipitates start to dissolve. Our microscopy evidence tracking the distribution/configuration of dislocations reveals that the shifting γ/γ′ interphase boundaries release the dislocations trapped there, facilitating their annihilation and rearrangement into low-energy network configurations. Our finding explains the success of a recent recovery protocol that kept superalloys as single crystals after supersolvus homogenization heat treatment.