Synthesis and characterization of nanocrystalline FeNiZrB developed by mechanical alloying

Abstract Mechanical alloying (MA) represents a non-expensive versatile route able to produce equilibrium as well as non-equilibrium materials including amorphous, nanostructured composites, and extended solid solution systems. In this work, two nanocrystalline alloys: Fe 71 Ni 14 Zr 6 B 9 (A) and Fe 60 Ni 14 Zr 6 B 20 (B) were developed. The as milled (80 h) alloy consisted primarily of metastable BCC-(Fe, Ni) nanocrystals (6–10 nm). The apparent activation values obtained are 3.2 ± 0.1 and 2.6 ± 0.1 eV for alloys A and B, respectively. The structural behaviour determined by X-ray diffraction and Mossbauer spectroscopy indicates that the thermally induced crystallization processes are related to the crystalline growth of the BCC-(Fe, Ni) phase and to formation of FCC-(Fe, Ni) and (Fe, Ni) 2 -B phases.