In-depth understanding of microstructure development is required to fabricate high quality products by additive manufacturing (for example, 3D printing). Here we report the governing role of side-branching in the microstructure development of alloys by laser powder bed fusion. We show that perturbations on the sides of cells (or dendrites) facilitate crystals to change growth direction by side-branching along orthogonal directions in response to changes in local heat flux. While the continuous epitaxial growth is responsible for slender columnar grains confined to the centreline of melt pools, side-branching frequently happening on the sides of melt pools enables crystals to follow drastic changes in thermal gradient across adjacent melt pools, resulting in substantial broadening of grains. The variation of scan pattern can interrupt the vertical columnar microstructure, but promotes both in-layer and out-of-layer side-branching, in particular resulting in the helical growth of microstructure in a chessboard strategy with 67° rotation between layers.

The growth mechanisms of primary Cu6Sn5 are studied in Sn-Cu alloys and solder joints by combining EBSD, FIB-tomography and synchrotron radiography. With increasing cooling rate and Cu content, Cu6Sn5 crystals developed from faceted hexagonal rods to grooved rods, in-plane branched faceted crystals and, finally, to nonfaceted dendrites. This range of growth morphologies has been rationalised into a kinetic microstructure map. Cu6Sn5 hexagonal rods grew along [0001] bounded by View the MathML source facets and Cu6Sn5 dendrites branched along in the View the MathML source planes. The faceted to nonfaceted transition indicates a kinetic interface roughening transition and a gradual change in mechanism from lateral growth governed by anisotropic attachment kinetics to continuous growth governed by diffusion and curvature. Finally, it is shown that the full range of Cu6Sn5 morphologies that grew for different composition and cooling rate combinations in bulk alloys can be engineered to grow in solder joints made with a single composition (Sn-0.7 wt%Cu/Cu) by altering the peak temperature and the cooling rate