EVIDENCE OF FRACTALS IN THE PRELIMINARY STAGES OF AMORPHIZATION BY MECHANICAL ALLOYING

The evolution of the amorphous phase in the solid state reaction of alloys with composition Fe67Ti33 was followed with neutron and X-ray scattering techniques in the case of metal powders treated by mechanical milling (MM) and by mechanical alloying (MA). The X-ray and neutron diffraction data show that the milling time is related to the coordinate of reaction. In the case of neutron small-angle scattering, data analysis of the log I vs. log Q graphs suggests that the fractal concept is useful in describing the earliest stages of the solid state amorphization reaction.