We present the results of lifetime positron annihilation spectroscopy (PALS) for the ferrumgallium alloys (galfenols) Fe-21at%Ga and Fe-22.4at%Ga, whose defect structure is connected with annealing from 20 to 1000 о С along the phase diagram of Fe100Ga100-x, at the L12→A2 transitions and in the sub-lattice of the D03 phase. In frames of the standard trapping model, we estimate the positron annihilation parameters for the bulk metal and for the different thermal vacancies herein. Also we define concentrations of these vacancy defects, which may be helpful for explanation of the physical properties of galfenols, including giant softening and extremal magnetostriction at the given intermetallic composition.
IntroductionFe-Ga alloys (galfenols), Fe100Ga100-x, possess a remarkable property to change their magnetostriction and elastic softening depending on their composition x [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. At the equilibrium phase diagram of Fe100Ga100-x (Fig. 1), the disordered body-centered cubic (bcc) A2 phase (or α-Fe) is in equilibrium with an face-centered cubic (fcc)-based L12 ordered one. Adding gallium atoms from 17 to 28 at% concentration to the α-Fe lattice, one observes, that maximum values of magnetostristion λ100 up to 400 ppm are known for quenched galfenols with 19 at. % Ga, which is more than an order of magnitude higher than that of pure α-Fe [8].There were a lot of attempts to explain a drastic increase of magnetostricition by specific ordering, accompanied with changes in the type of a defect structure around the Curie point. So, phenomena of linear anelasticity in galfenols are studied with mechanical spectroscopy [1][2][3][4], where the relaxation peaks were observed in connection with the presence of linear and point defects, i.e. dislocations, grain and phase boundaries etc. at the crossover regions A2+D03, A2+L12, and in the single phases of the equilibrium phase diagram (Fig. 1).Heat-treatment has a significant influence on structural ordering in galfenols. High resolution X-ray diffraction for alloys clarified, that in Fe-19.5at%Ga, after quenching, only the A2 phase exists, whereas, at slow cooling, the 67% A2 and the 33% D03 phases form. For Fe-22 at% Ga, the two-phase mixture behaves vice versa, the 40% A2 and 60% D03 are observed at quenching and the 100% D03 appears at slow cooling.In our consideration, we rest on two compounds Fe-21at%Ga and Fe-22.4at%Ga, where we anticipate appearance of features in defect structure nearby the region of the critical magnetostriction.At the step-by-step annealing for Fe-21at%Ga, due to the diagram (Fig.1), the regions of the equilibrium phase co-existence (A2+L12 by 588