The formation of quasicrystal phase in Al-Cu-Fe system by mechanical alloying

Abstract

In order to obtain quasicrystalline (QC) phase by mechanical alloying (MA) in the Al-Cu-Fe system, mixtures of elementary Al, Cu and Fe in the proportion of 65-20-15 (at. %) were produced by high energy ball milling (HEBM). A very high energy type mill (spex) and short milling times (up to 5 hours) were employed. The resulting powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). QC phase was not directly formed by milling under the conditions employed in this work. However, phase transformations identified by DSC analysis reveals that annealing after HEBM possibly results in the formation of the Ψ QC phase.