Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

In this letter, microstructural and mechanical inhomogeneities, a great concern for single crystal Ni-based superalloys repaired by laser assisted 3D printing, have been probed near the epitaxial interface. Nanoindentation tests show the hardness to be uniformly lower in the bulk of the substrate and constantly higher in the epitaxial cladding layer. A gradient of hardness through the heat affected zone is also observed, resulting from an increase in dislocation density, as indicated by the broadening of the synchrotron X-ray Laue microdiffraction reflections. The hardening mechanism of the cladding region, on the other hand, is shown to originate not only from high dislocation density but also and more importantly from the fine γ/γ′ microstructure.