Structural study of an amorphous alloy produced by mechanical alloying using XRD, EXAFS and RMC simulations

The structure of an amorphous Cu64Ti36 alloy produced by mechanical alloying was studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy techniques and modeled through reverse Monte Carlo simulations using the total structure factor S ( K ) and the EXAFS χ ( k ) oscillations on Cu K edge as input data. From the simulations the partial pair distribution functions g i j ( r ) and the bond-angle distribution functions Θ i j ℓ ( cos θ ) were determined and, from these functions, average coordination numbers and average interatomic distances for the first neighbors were calculated. We also obtained information about the three-dimensional structures present in the alloy.