Programming Crystallographic Orientation in Additive-Manufactured Beta-Type Titanium Alloy

Additively manufactured metallic materials typically exhibit preferential <001> or <110> crystallographic orientations along the build direction. Nowadays, the challenge is to program crystallographic orientation along arbitrary 3D direction in additive-manufactured materials. In this work, it is established a technique of multitrack coupled directional solidification (MTCDS) to program the <001> crystallographic orientation along an arbitrary 3D direction in biomedical beta-type Ti-Nb-Zr-Ta alloys via laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). MTCDS can be achieved via directional solidification of coupled multi-track melt pools with a specific temperature gradient direction. This results in continuous epitaxial growth of the β-Ti phase and consequently sets the <001> crystallographic orientation along an arbitrary 3D direction. This way, relatively low elastic modulus values of approximately 60 ± 1.2 GPa are customized along an arbitrary 3D direction. It is expected that MTCDS can be generalized to a wide range of applications for programming specific crystallographic orientations and, respectively, tailoring desired properties of different metallic materials.