Constitutional and structural studies of the intermetallic phase, ZrCu

Abstract

Constitutional and structural studies have been carried out on the equiatomic percent alloy ZrCu, using magnetic susceptibility measurements, metallography and X-ray diffraction. The high-temperature magnetic susceptibility measurements and the metallographic studies indicate the presence of two solid state transformations in this alloy, a martensitic transformation with M _s=440±5 K and a eutectoid transformation with T _E=985±5 K. Thus, if the high-temperature ZrCu phase is metastably retained to lower temperatures then the martensitic transformation is observed, whereas prolonged annealing just below T _E produces a eutectoid mixture; the metallographic studies indicate that this mixture is lamellar in nature. The X-ray diffraction studies indicate that the high-temperature ZrCu phase has the b c c CsCl-type structure.