Mechanical alloying of Fe and V powders: Intermixing and amorphous phase formation

Abstract
Mössbauer spectrometry and x-ray diffractometry were used to characterize the microstructural changes that occurred during the mechanical alloying of Fe and V powders, After 3 h of essentially no interatomic intermixing, an Fe–V alloy began to form. At first the chemical composition of this alloy was highly inhomogeneous, having large variations over distance scales of less than 100 Å. After about 24 h of ball milling, the alloy homogenized and then became at least partly amorphous.