Solid-state reactions during mechanical alloying of ternary Fe-Al-X (X=Ni, Mn, Cu, Ti, Cr, B, Si) systems: A review

The last decade has witnessed an intensive research in the field of nanocrystalline materials due to their enhanced properties. A lot of processing techniques were developed in order to synthesis these novel materials, among them mechanical alloying or high-energy ball milling. In fact, mechanical alloying is one of the most common operations in the processing of solids. It can be used to quickly and easily synthesize a variety of technologically useful materials which are very difficult to manufacture by other techniques. One advantage of MA over many other techniques is that is a solid state technique and consequently problems associated with melting and solidification are bypassed. Special attention is being paid to the synthesis of alloys through reactions mainly occurring in solid state in many metallic ternary Fe-Al-X systems, in order to improve mainly Fe-Al structural and mechanical properties. The results show that nanocrystallization is the common result occurring in all systems during MA process. The aim of this work is to illustrate the uniqueness of MA process to induce phase transformation in metallic Fe-Al-X (X=Ni, Mn, Cu, Ti, Cr, B, Si) systems.