Determination of Site-Occupancies in Aluminide Intermetallics by Alchemi

AbstractThe site-distributions of Fe in four B2-ordered NiAl-based alloys with Fe concentrations of 10%, 2%, and 0.5% have been determined by ALCHEMI (atom-location by channeling-enhanced microanalysis). Site-distributions have been extracted with standard errors between ∼1.5% (10% Fe concentration) and ∼6% (0.5% Fe concentration). The results show that Fe has no strong site-preference in NiAl and tends to reside on the site of the stoichiometrically deficient host element.An improved ALCHEMI analysis procedure is outlined. The analysis explicidy addresses the phenomenon of ionization delocalization, which previously complicated the determination of site-distributions in aluminide intermetallics, leading to inaccurate and oftentimes nonphysical results. The improved ALCHEMI analysis also addresses the presence of anti-site defects. The data acquisition conditions have been optimized to minimize the sources of statistical and systematic error. This optimized procedure should be suitable for all analyses of B2-ordered alloys. Several analyses at different channeling orientations show that the extracted site-occupancies are robust as long as the data are acquired at orientations that are remote from any major pole of the crystal.