An investigation of impurity-vacancy interactions in aluminum by the Mössbauer technique

Abstract

Specimens of high purity aluminum, doped with Mössbauer impurities of either 119Sn, 57Fe or 57Co (the parent isotope of 57Fe) were quenched in order to introduce vacancies and annealed to make these defects associate with the impurity atoms. Perturbations of the Mössbauer signal were observed, as well as a mean shift of line position and some line broadening. The precise nature of the defect reactions involved could not be identified unambiguously. The measurements indicate that clustering reactions occur even in very dilute specimens. In the Sn Al system the formation and subsequent break-up of GP zones during annealing could be observed.