Mössbauer comparative study of Fe–Si (3.5 wt%) alloys produced by melting and by mechanical alloying

Abstract

Mössbauer spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction measurements were done on Fe–Si (3.5 wt%) alloys produced by melting and by mechanical alloying during 15, 30, 50 and 75 milling hours from over 99% purity powders. The Mössbauer spectra were fitted using hyperfine field distribution and it was obtained for all the samples in three ferromagnetic sites with fields of 27, 30 and 33 T for the mechanical alloyed samples and 26.8, 30.13 and 32.83 T for the commercial sample. These three sites are attributed to the pure Fe, Fe with one Si in the next near neighbor (nnn) and Fe with two Si in the nnn. As the milling time increases, the mean field increases too. X-ray diffraction measurement shows that all the samples are BCC, with a lattice parameter that increases with the milling time. These lattice parameters are bigger than that of the commercial alloy.