Formation of amorphous Ni-Zr alloy powder by mechanical alloying of intermetallic powder mixtures and mixtures of nickel or zirconium with intermetallics

Mechanical alloying was used to synthesize Ni_xZr_1–x alloys from mixtures of intermetallic compound powders, and also from mixtures of intermetallic compound powders and pure elemental powders. The mechanically alloyed powders were amorphous in the range 0.24 x 0.85. This range is larger than amorphous alloys produced by the melt-spinning technique and mechanical alloying of elemental crystalline powders. Two-phase mixtures of the amorphous phase and the corresponding crystalline terminal solid solution were formed in the range 0.10 x 0.22, and x=0.90. It is found that the morphological development during mechanical alloying of these powders is different from mechanical alloying using only pure ductile crystalline elemental powders. The thermal stability has been investigated. The enthalpy and activation energy of crystallization for Ni-Zr amorphous powders prepared by mechanical alloying are lower than those for melt-spun samples of the same composition. The crystallization temperature of the mechanically alloyed Ni-Zr amorphous powders is higher than that of meltspun samples in the composition range Ni₂₀Zr₈₀ to Ni₃₃Zr₆₇ and Ni₄₀Zr₆₀ to Ni₆₀Zr₄₀. The presence of tiny crystallites as nucleation centres and high oxygen levels in the mechanically alloyed amorphous alloys might be responsible for the differences in crystallization behaviour. A new crystalline metastable phase was observed during crystallization studies of Ni₂₄Zr₇₆ amorphous powder.