Excellent shape recovery characteristics of Cu-Al-Mn-Fe shape memory single crystal

Shape memory alloys can recover the deformed shape due to their superelasticity or shape memory effect. In this study, a novel Cu-Al-Mn-Fe shape memory single crystal is reported. The results show that it has excellent superelasticity and shape memory effect simultaneously when deformed at room temperature, as well as tunably wide response temperature range with near-zero interval of reverse phase transformation. When deforming one single crystal at room temperature, it not only possesses full superelasticity of 7%, but also tunable shape memory effects up to 8.8 %. The full shape recovery during heating exhibits near-zero response interval and tunably wide response temperature range of 166 K depending on the deformation. The functional characteristics of the alloys result from the controllable reverse phase transformation hinging on the stabilization of stress-induced martensite. This class of Cu-Al-Mn-Fe alloy may be used as both superelastic materials, and shape memory materials with wide working temperature range as high-sensitive detector, driver or sensor.