Point Defects Quenched in Nickel Aluminide and Related Intermetallic Compounds

Point defects in the highly ordered B2 compounds NiAl, CoAl and FeAl were studied using the perturbed gammagamma angular correlations (PAC) technique. Quadrupole interactions detected at dilute ^{111}In probes on Al sites in NiAl and CoAl were identified with complexes containing one or two vacancies in the first atomic shell. Measurements on rapidly quenched NiAl and CoAl exhibited increases in site fractions of vacancy-probe complexes caused by formation of thermal defects. Site fractions were analyzed using the law of mass action to obtain absolute vacancy concentrations. PAC is shown to be a powerful new technique for the quantitative study of equilibrium defects in solids. For NiAl, the vacancy concentration quenched-in from a given temperature was found to be independent of composition over the range 50.4 -53.5 at.% Ni, identifying the Schottky defect (vacancy pair) as the dominant equilibrium defect, and ruling out the so-called triple defect. Formation energies and entropies of Schottky pairs were determined to be 2.66(8) and 3.48(12) eV, and 12(1) and 17(2) k_{rm B}, respectively, for NiAl and CoAl. The entropies suggest huge vacancy concentrations, 13%, at the melting temperatures of NiAl and CoAl. Migration energies of Ni and Co vacancies were found to be 1.8(2) and 2.5(2) eV, respectively. FeAl exhibited complex behavior. A low-temperature regime was detected in NiAl and CoAl within which vacancies are mobile but do not anneal out, so that the vacancy concentration remains constant. In NiAl, this "bottleneck" regime extends from 350 to 700 ^circC. Vacancies were found to be bound to the In probes with an energy very close to 0.20 eV in NiAl and CoAl. An explanation of the bottleneck is proposed in terms of saturation of all lattice sinks. This annealing bottleneck should exist in a wide range of intermetallic compounds when there is a sufficiently high vacancy concentration.