Abstract
Mössbauer spectroscopy of 57Fe was used to study the chemical form and distribution of iron in Zircaloy-2 and Zircaloy-4. The spectra of Zircaloy-4 consist of two overlapping quadrupole-split doublets, which can be ascribed to precipitates of the pseudobinary Laves-phase intermetallic compound Zr(Cr,Fe) 2, which has a hexagonal MgZn 2 (C14) type structure and cubic MgCu 2 (C15) type structure. In Zircaloy-2, a large fraction of iron was also found in the form of Zr 2(Fe,Ni) precipitates, having a tetragonal Al 2Cu (C16) type structure. Characteristic room-temperature values of Mössbauer spectral parameters were determined for the three types of intermetallic precipitates. At liquid helium temperature, both alloys exhibit a poorly resolved magnetic hyperfine splitting, attributed to the low-temperature ferromagnetism of cubic Zr(Cr,Fe) 2 Laves-phase particles. This effect is more pronounced in Zircaloy-4 than in Zircaloy-2. The possibility of determining volume fractions of different phases from their relative spectral areas is discussed.
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