Crystalline-To-Amorphous Transformation of Intermetallic Compounds in the Zr-Fe-M System Induced by Irradiation

Abstract

AbstractThe binary and ternary intermetallic compounds Zr3Fe, Zr2 Fe, (Zr0.5,Nb0.5)3Fe, Zr3(Fe0.9,Ni0.1) and Zr3(Fe0.5,Ni0.5) were subjected to 900 keV electron irradiation until amorphous to study the change in the dose-to-amorphization with temperature. The critical temperatures were observed to vary with dose rate, and with the type of compound. Hexagonal (Zr0.5,Nb0.5)3Fe had an appreciably lower critical temperature and higher dose to amorphization at low temperature than orthorombic Zr3Fe, whereas other orthorombic Zr3(Fex,NiI-x) compounds were essentially identical in behavior to Zr3Fe. The electron energy dependence of the dose-to-amorphization was studied in Zr3Fe between 250 and 900 keV. The analysis of the results gives displacement energies of EZrd = 26 eV, EFed = 18 eV in the Zr3Fe compound.