Bildung amorpher Metall–Metalloid-Verbindungen durch Ionenimplantation

Binary And Ternary Amorphous Alloys of Ion-Implanted Fe-Ti-C

The microstructure of Fe implanted with up to 50 at.% C was found to consist of hexagonal iron carbide precipitates oriented with respect to the Fe matrix. For higher C concentrations, an amorphous phase forms. This concentration dependence is explained in terms of the lattice structure of the iron carbide. In Ti-implanted Fe, substitutional Ti was found in the bcc Fe lattice for concentrations ≤ 15 at.% Ti. The work of others suggests that amorphous phases form for ≥ 33 at.% Ti. These results are discussed in terms of concentration boundaries of the ternary Fe(Ti,C) amorphous phase.

Ion beam alloying methods are currently being used to form metastable alloys [1], both for fundamental investigations of such alloys as well as for potential use to improve physical properties of components [2]. An important consideration in metal alloys is what phase will form upon implantation; one aspect of this question is to determine when amorphous phases will form. Rules are currently being advanced to predict alloy systems which will yield amorphous phases. By using ion irradiation and ion beam mixing as well as ion implantation, such rules can be evaluated over entire composition ranges.

To gain insight into amorphous phase formation, we have studied Fe alloys implanted with C, Ti and Ti + C. The Fe(C) alloys exhibit compound precipitation and amorphous phase formation; the precipitation and the concentrations at which the amorphous phase appears can be accounted for by considerations of the structure of the hexagonal carbide which forms. Based on conventional uses of the Fe(C) system, such alloys may be useful for improving mechanical properties by implanting C into ferrous components. Iron implanted with Ti is examined to a limited extent here, but by including ion irradiation studies by others [3], a more complete characterization of Fe(Ti) alloys is obtained. The microstructures of Fe(C) and Fe(Ti) are examined along with the known composition limits of amorphous Fe(Ti,C) alloys, which are important for their improved mechanical properties [2]. Taken together, a more complete determination of amorphous phase formation in this ternary system is obtained.

Packing of crystalline structures of binary hard spheres: an analytical approach and application to amorphization

The geometrical stability of the three lattices of the cubic crystal system, viz. face-centered cubic (fcc), body-centered cubic (bcc), and simple cubic (sc), consisting of bimodal discrete hard spheres, and the transition to amorphous packing is studied. First, the random close packing (rcp) fraction of binary mixtures of amorphously packed spheres is recapitulated. Next, the packing of a binary mixture of hard spheres in randomly disordered cubic structures is analyzed, resulting in original analytical expressions for the unit cell volume and the packing fraction, and which are also valid for the other five crystal systems. The bimodal fcc lattice parameter appears to be in close agreement with empirical hard sphere data from literature, and this parameter could be used to distinguish the size mismatch effect from all other effects in distorted binary lattices of materials. Here, as a first model application, bimodal amorphous and crystalline fcc/bcc packing fractions are combined, yielding the optimum packing configuration, which depends on mixture composition and diameter ratio only. Maps of the closest packing mode are established and applied to colloidal mixtures of polydisperse spheres and to binary alloys of bcc, fcc, and hcp metals. The extensive comparison between the analytical expressions derived here and the published numerical and empirical data yields good agreement. Hence, it is seen that basic space-filling theories on "simple" noninteracting hard spheres are a valuable tool for the study of crystalline materials.