In this work, vacuum hot pressed Ni-Mn-Sn-In Heusler alloys with different concentration of In (0, 2 and 4 at.%), were investigated. The magneto-structural behaviour and microstructure dependencies on chemical composition and on heat treatment were examined. It was found that the martensite start transformation temperature increases with growing In content and to a lesser extent with increasing temperature of heat treatment. The high energy X-ray synchrotron radiation results, demonstrated that both chemical composition as well as temperature of heat treatment slightly modified the crystal structures of the studied alloys. Microstructural investigation performed by transmission electron microscopy confirmed chemical composition and crystal structure changes in the alloys.
Two MgLiAl alloys of composition 4.5% Li and 1.5% Al (in wt.%) composed of α phase and of 9% Li, 1.5% Al composed of α (hcp) + β (bcc) phases were subjected to twist channel angular pressing (TCAP) deformation. Such deformation of α + β alloys caused less effective grain refinement than that of single α phase alloy. However, with increasing number of passes, grain size of single α phase alloy increased and that of β phase in two phase α + β alloy also grew, which suggested the effect of dynamic recrystallization. TEM studies allowed identifying particles of Li2MgAl phase of size of few μm. {001}<100> texture was observed in extruded alloy. Texture studies of extruded and TCAPed single phase hcp alloy indicated texture with {101 – 0} plane perpendicular to the extrusion direction and {0002} plane parallel to the extrusion direction. Duplex α + β alloys showed poor texture development.