DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MECHANICAL ALLOYING AND MECHANICAL DISORDERING IN THE AMORPHIZATION REACTION OF AL50TA50 IN A ROD MILL

Amorphous Al50Ta50 alloy powders have been synthesized by mechanical alloying (MA) from elemental powders of aluminium and tantalum, and mechanical disordering (MD) from crystalline intermetallic compound powders of AlTa respectively using the rod milling technique. The mechanically alloyed and the mechanically disordered alloy powders were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, electron probe microanalysis, transmission electron microscopy, differential thermal analysis, differential scanning calorimetry and chemical analysis. The results have shown that the crystal-to-amorphous transformation in the MD process occurs through one stage, while the crystalline-to-amorphous formation in the MA process occurs through three stages. At the early and intermediate stages of the MA time, heating the alloy powders to 700 K leads to the formation of an amorphous phase by a solid-state amorphizing reaction. At the final stage of the MA time, the amorphous phase is crystallized through a single sharp exothermic peak. Contrary to this, amorphous alloy powders produced by MD are crystallized through two broad exothermic peaks.