The age-precipitations structure of Al-Mg-Ge alloy aged at 473K

The Al-Mg-Ge alloy is one of the age-hardening aluminum alloy after solution heat treatment. It has been proposed that the age-precipitation behavior of Al-Mg-Ge alloy is different from that of Al-Mg-Si alloy according to our previous works about the microstructure on Al-Mg-Ge alloy over-aged at 523K. For example, The hardness of peak aged Al-1.0mass%Mg₂Ge alloy is higher than that of Al-1.0mass%Mg₂Si alloy. The precipitates in the over-aged samples have been classified as some metastable phases, such as the β'-phase and Type-A precipitates and equilibrium phase of β-Mg₂Ge by TEM observation. There a few reports about microstructure on Al-Mg-Ge alloys observed by TEM for different aging times. The age-precipitations structure of Al-Mg-Ge alloy has not been became clear. In this work, TEM observation was investigated the microstructure on Al-1.0mass%Mg₂Ge alloy for difference aging times aged at 473K.