Rebuttal comments on “Mitigating grain growth in binary nanocrystalline alloys through solute selection based on thermodynamic stability maps”

Darling et al. (2014) outlined a new model for nanocrystalline stability and applied it to a large number of systems to demonstrate its utility/applicability and how to visualize/select promising solutes in these nanocrystalline systems. The present article addresses some of the concerns raised by Lejcek and Hofmann (2015) and those that additional readers may have about this work. In some cases we have found that their concerns reflect ones that are shared by the community in developing and applying these sorts of models. For instance, in utilizing thermodynamic properties from such a large database of systems, researchers should use due diligence in extrapolating results to real systems - this model should be used as a guide for selecting prospective binary systems that may exhibit some degree of thermodynamic stability in nanocrystalline materials. Last, there was an oversight in terms of the phase transformation temperature for Fe and Ti, which negligibly changed the model results. In short, the present article is intended to bring to light and clarify some of the items raised by Lejcek and Hofmann.