Variations of zinc content in solid solution during reversion treatment in an Al-4.4 At. Pct Zn Alloy

Abstract

In a previous work 1 it has been shown that the thermoelectric power (TEP), measured at 20 °C, is insensitive to GP zones existing in Al-Zn alloys. This result has been verified for large precipitates sizes (ø = 40 Å). The TEP seems to depend only on the zinc content remaining in solid solution in the matrix. Therefore this TEP property allows to follow, especially, the reversion of GP zones. This has been already verified in a qualitative way. 2 Thus the purpose of the present work is to follow quantitatively the evolution of the zinc content in solid solution by TEP measurements and to compare these results to those obtained by the measurement of the integral intensity of X-Ray small angle scattering (XSAS). Moreover it will be shown that the temperature at which TEP measurements are carried out, has no influence on zinc content determination.