Synthesis and structural analysis of Cu10Zr7

Few and poor experimental data for the Cu10Zr7 intermetallic compound are available in literature. Up to now, its crystal structure has not been refined yet and the atomic coordinates of the iso-structural Ni10Zr7 phase were used. The recent interest of near equiatomic CuZr alloys, as high temperature shape memory alloys (HT SMAs) as well as metallic glasses, requires defined structural data for determining the co-existing phases in bulk material properly. We synthetized pure polycrystalline Cu10Zr7 alloy and both its cell parameters and structure were refined by Rietveld method; definitively correct lattice values, space group and atomic coordinates are reported and discussed comparing them with the previous data available in the literature.