A 2.9 GPa Strength Nano-Grained and Nano-Precipitated 304L-Type Austenitic Stainless Steel

Austenitic stainless steel has high potential as nuclear and engineering materials, but it is often coarse grained and has relatively low yield strength, typically 200-400 MPa. We prepared a bulk nanocrystalline lanthanum-doped 304L austenitic stainless steel alloy by a novel technique that combines mechanical alloying and high-pressure sintering. The achieved alloy has an average grain size of 30 ± 12 nm and contains a high density (~10²⁴ m^-3) of lanthanum-enriched nanoprecipitates with an average particle size of approx. 4 nm, leading to strong grain boundary strengthening and dispersion strengthening effects, respectively. The yield strength of nano-grained and nano-precipitated stainless steel reaches 2.9 GPa, which well exceeds that of ultrafine-grained (100-1000 nm) and nano-grained (<100 nm) stainless steels prepared by other techniques developed in recent decades. The strategy to combine nano-grain strengthening and nanoprecipitation strengthening should be generally applicable to developing other ultra-strong metallic alloys.