Structural and Morphological Study of a Series of Ball Milled Nanocrystalline Fe_1-<i>x</i>Al_<i>x</i> (0.3 ≤ <i>x</i> ≤ 0.6) Alloys

Abstract

In the present manuscript, the authors have systematically investigated the structural and morphological properties of a series of mechanically alloyed Fe 1- x Al x (0.3 ≤ x ≤ 0.6) samples using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). All the samples, after 5 hr of milling, show crystalline structure, irrespective of the constituent concentration and are textured mainly along (110) direction. In Fe-rich samples, the formation of an off-stoichiometric Fe 3 Al phase is favored and in case of Al-rich samples, both Al-rich phases and clustering of Al atoms are present. Analysis of line breadths was carried out to get an insight into the interrelated effects of average crystallite size, and lattice parameters. The grain size of constituents was decreased to the nanometer range (between 6 - 8 nm) and the constituents dissolved at the nanograin boundaries. Similar conclusions were also revealed from the SEM results which show that the initial shape of particles disappeared completely, and their structure became a mixture of small and large angularshaped crystallites with different sizes. The results of this research could be directly employed in the design of deformation schedules for the industrial processing of Fe-Al alloys.