Structural evolution of Fe–50 at.% Al powders during mechanical alloying and subsequent annealing processes

Iron aluminides, despite having desirable properties like excellent corrosion resistance, present low room-temperature ductility and low strength at high temperatures. Mechanical alloying as a capable process to synthesize nanocrystalline materials is under consideration to modify these drawbacks. In this study, the microstructure of iron aluminide powders synthesized by mechanical alloying and subsequent annealing was investigated. Elemental Fe and Al powders with the same atomic percent were milled in a planetary ball mill for 15 min to 100 h. The powder milled for 80 h was annealed at temperatures of 300, 500 and 700 °C for 1 h. The alloyed powders were disordered Fe(Al) solid solutions which were transformed to FeAl intermetallic after annealing. The effect of the milling time and annealing treatment on structural parameters, such as crystallite size, lattice parameter and lattice strain was evaluated by X-ray diffraction. Typically, these values were 15 nm, 2.92 Å and 3.1% for the disordered Fe(Al) solid solution milled for 80 h and were 38.5 nm, 2.896 Å and 1.2% for the FeAl intermetallic annealed at 700 °C, respectively.