APFIM studies of nanocrystallizations of amorphous alloys

This paper reports recent atom probe analysis results of Fe-Zr-B(-Cu) and Al-Ni-Ce(-Cu) amorphous alloys, in which nanocrystalline microstructures develop by primary crystallization. In these alloy systems, enrichment of slow diffusing solute was found at the interfaces between primary crystals and amorphous matrix during the nucleation and growth stage. In the case of ternary Fe-Zr-B, no evidence for compositional heterogeneities were found prior to the onset of crystallization reaction. On the other hand, clustering of Cu atoms was observed in quaternary Fe-Zr-B-Cu alloy prior to the crystallization reaction. In the ternary Fe-Zr-B alloy, nucleation sites seem to be provided by the quenched-in nuclei which were observed as medium range ordered (MRO) domains by HREM. In the as-quenched Al-Ni-Ce(-Cu) alloy, compositional fluctuations were present from the as-quenched state. These observations suggest that nuclei for primary crystallization are provided in various forms such as MRO domains, solute clusters and compositional heterogeneities.