AVERAGE WIDTHS OF GRAIN-BOUNDARIES IN NANOPHASE ALLOYS SYNTHESIZED BY MECHANICAL ATTRITION

Many binary ferrous alloys were synthesized by mechanical attrition in a high-energy ball mill. X-ray diffractometry and transmission electron microscopy were used to measure grain sizes, which were as small as a few nanometers in several alloys. The nanocrystalline alloys showed new features in their Mössbauer spectra, which we associated with 57Fe atoms at and near grain boundaries. The experimental data on the fraction of 57Fe atoms at and near grain boundaries were correlated to the measured grain sizes to obtain an average width of the grain boundaries. The average grain-boundary widths of the fcc alloys Fe-Mn and Ni-Fe were approximately 0.5 nm, but the average widths of grain boundaries in the bcc alloys Cr-Fe, Mo-Fe, and Fe-Ti were somewhat larger than 1 nm. © 1995 American Institute of Physics.