In-situ study of precipitates in Al–Zn–Mg–Cu alloys using anomalous small-angle x-ray scattering**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11005143, 11405259, and 51274046) and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry of China (Grant No. [2014]1685).

Abstract

In the present work, the precipitate compositions and precipitate amounts of these elements (including the size distribution, volume fraction, and inter-precipitate distance) on the Cu-containing 7000 series aluminum alloys (7150 and 7085 Al alloys), are investigated by anomalous small-angle x-ray scattering (ASAXS) at various energies. The scattering intensity of 7150 alloy with T6 aging treatment decreases as the incident x-ray energy approaches the Zn absorption edge from the lower energy side, while scattering intensity does not show a noticeable energy dependence near the Cu absorption edge. Similar results are observed in the 7085 alloy in an aging process (120 °C) by employing in-situ ASAXS measurements, indicating that the precipitate compositions should include Zn element and should not be strongly related to Cu element at the early stage after 10 min. In the aging process, the precipitate particles with an initial average size of ∼ 8 Å increase with aging time at an energy of 9.60 keV, while the increase with a slower rate is observed at an energy of 9.65 keV as near the Zn absorption edge.