A study of amorphous Fe58Ta42 alloys produced by mechanical alloying

The solid state ‘amorphisation’ reaction in Fe58Ta42 samples produced by mechanical alloying (MA) has been studied using X-ray and neutron diffraction; neutron small-angle-scattering (SAS) and Mössbauer spectroscopy. The diffraction and Mössbauer measurements have shown that the reaction is rapid and that the parental elements are transformed into a genuinely amorphous alloy after 6 h of MA in a conventional Spex 8000 mill. The total structure factor S(Q) of the amorphous alloy has been obtained and the reduced radial distribution G(r) derived from its Fourier transform. In addition, the neutron SAS has been used to study the changes in the large scale structures of the samples in the initial stages of the reaction, which were measured in the as-received and contrast-matched states. The results are consistent with the presence of a duplex, filamentary, composite whose interfaces are fractal, in those samples with the shortest times of MA.