Tetragonal dipole dominated Zener relaxation in BCC-structured Fe-17at.%Ga single crystals

Abstract

The stress-induced reorientation of the low-symmetry defects due to substitution atom pairs can give rise to an internal friction peak (Zener relaxation) and the first-nearest-neighbor substitutional atom pairs are plainly considered as the dominant contribution. Here, the Zener relaxation in the body-centered cubic (BCC) FeGa single crystals with different orientations was investigated, which against intuition originates primarily from the stress-induced reorientation of the second-nearest-neighbor Ga-Ga atom pairs. This Ga-Ga atom pair configuration is prevalent at high temperatures as directly observed by high-temperature in situ electron microscopy experiments. This phenomenon establishes non-ambiguously a direct correlation between Zener relaxation strengths and magnetostrictive properties. In addition, it was found that the diffusion activation energy of Ga atoms in FeGa single crystals is significantly lower than that in other iron-based alloys, suggesting that this value is closer to the actual diffusion activation energy of Ga atoms in FeGa alloys. These findings offer valuable insights into the study of short-range ordering in BCC alloys and the exploration of their functional properties.