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Nucleation of fractal nanocrystallites upon annealing of Fe-based metallic glass

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Abstract

Bragg coherent X-ray diffraction imaging has been used to determine the structure of the initial clusters of α-Fe nano crystals which form upon annealing of an iron-based amorphous alloy or metallic glass. The method is able to identify the shapes and strain of these crystallites without any need for cutting the sample, so can visualize them in three dimensions in their intact state. In this way, the delicate dendritic structures on the exterior of the crystallites can be seen and its density versus radius relationship identifies a fractal dimension of the porous region that is consistent with diffusion-limited aggregation models. The crystal sizes were found to be around 60 nm after annealing at 700 °C growing to about 330 nm after annealing at 750 °C. This article introduces the BCDI method and describes its application to characterize previously recrystallized samples of iron-based amorphous alloys. It paves the way for a possible future in situ nucleation/growth investigation of the relationship between kinetics and nanostructure of metallic glass.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) grant EP/I022562/1 “Phase modulation technology for X-ray imaging”. Work performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract Number DE-SC00112704. Work at TongJi University was supported by the Talent Program “Materials Nano-structure” with grants 152221 and 152243, National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 51371127 and 51274151 as well as Shanghai Natural Science Foundation grant 13ZR1462400. The experimental work was carried out at Advanced Photon Source Beamline 34-ID-C, built with funds from the US National Science Foundation under Grant DMR-9724294 and operated by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. We thank Ross Harder and Evan Maxey for assistance with the beamline.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, TongJi University, Shanghai, 201804, China

    Jiecheng Diao, Bo Chen, Qiang Luo, Wei Lin, Xianping Liu, Jun Shen & Ian Robinson

  2. London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, London, WC1H 0AH, UK

    Bo Chen & Ian Robinson

  3. Division of Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA

    Ian Robinson

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  1. Jiecheng Diao
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Correspondence to Bo Chen.

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Diao, J., Chen, B., Luo, Q. et al. Nucleation of fractal nanocrystallites upon annealing of Fe-based metallic glass. Journal of Materials Research 32, 1880–1887 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2017.79

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