Short range ordering in undercooled Fe₃Al

Abstract

Alloys of Fe-27 at.% Al were prepared far from thermodynamic equilibrium by ultra-rapid quenching from the melt. The hyperfine magnetic field (hmf) distribution revealed a wide variety of local Al environments around ⁵⁷Fe atoms. Upon low temperature annealing, the probabilities of these different Al environments changed at different rates. The “kinetic path” of short range ordering in Fe₃Al is consistent with that found in a previous study of long range ordering, where B2 order grows more rapidly than D0₃ order at lower temperatures.