NANOSTRUCTURED AND AMORPHOUS MATERIALS BY MECHANICAL ALLOYING

Mechanical Alloying is particularly attractive because it can be used to process structurally uniform and isotropic bulk quantities of powdered materials that have a fine length scale. Furthermore, it appears to be applicable to many combinations of elements. Here experimental results regarding the synthesis and characterization of several binary and ternary nanocrystalline and amorphous alloys of Ti, Zr, Hf, V, Nb and Fe with other transition elements and with B, C and Si are reported. The nanocrystalline and amorphous powders, with effective particle size between 7 and 30nm, were prepared by mechanical alloying in a high-energy ball-mill using commercial elemental powders and/or alloy powder.