TITLE:
Structural and Morphological Study of a Series of Ball Milled Nanocrystalline Fe1-xAlx (0.3 ≤ x ≤ 0.6) Alloys
AUTHORS:
Sandeep Rajan, Rajni Shukla, Anil Kumar, Anupam Vyas, Ranjeet Brajpuriya
KEYWORDS:
Intermetallics, FeAl, Phase Formation, XRD, SEM, Mechanical Alloying
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Modern Physics,
Vol.5 No.8,
May
29,
2014
ABSTRACT: In the
present manuscript, the authors have systematically investigated the structural
and morphological properties of a series of mechanically alloyed Fe1-xAlx (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 Fe3Al 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.