We identified the presence and chemical nature of bulk vacancies in Al-Pd-Mn quasicrystals by measuring the structure and composition of two-and fivefold cleavage surfaces of different preannealed quasicrystals subjected to postcleavage heat treatments using scanning electron microscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy. A strong dependence of the surface structure from the preannealing is observed and explained by varying concentrations of bulk vacancies. The analysis of the data shows that as-grown Al-Pd-Mn quasicrystals contain Al, Pd, and Mn vacancies in supersaturated but near stoichiometric concentrations, while long-term preannealed samples contain a much lower vacancy concentration, with a tendency to have excess Al vacancies. We found that Al and Mn vacancies are more mobile at lower temperatures than Pd vacancies, and that the diffusion of Mn vacancies is directly coupled to the mobility of Al vacancies. The results demonstrate that the evolution of the surface structure is primarily affected by bulk vacancies migrating toward the surface during heat treatments and provide a new methodology to characterize the vacancies in intermetallic alloys. We identified the presence and chemical nature of bulk vacancies in Al-Pd-Mn quasicrystals by measuring the structure and composition of two-and fivefold cleavage surfaces of different preannealed quasicrystals subjected to postcleavage heat treatments using scanning electron microscopy and Auger electron spectroscopy. A strong dependence of the surface structure from the preannealing is observed and explained by varying concentrations of bulk vacancies. The analysis of the data shows that as-grown Al-Pd-Mn quasicrystals contain Al, Pd, and Mn vacancies in supersaturated but near stoichiometric concentrations, while long-term preannealed samples contain a much lower vacancy concentration, with a tendency to have excess Al vacancies. We found that Al and Mn vacancies are more mobile at lower temperatures than Pd vacancies, and that the diffusion of Mn vacancies is directly coupled to the mobility of Al vacancies. The results demonstrate that the evolution of the surface structure is primarily affected by bulk vacancies migrating toward the surface during heat treatments and provide a new methodology to characterize the vacancies in intermetallic alloys.
Keywords
Ames Laboratory
Disciplines
Physical Chemistry
Comments
This article is from
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.