Defect-production and recovery in an electron-irradiated fe-40at%ai ordered alloy

Abstract

Poly and single crystals of ordered Fe-40 at.% Al alloy were irradiated with 2.5 MeV electrons at 21 K and then annealed. Increases in the radiation-induced resistivity are interpreted in terms of the production and recombination of Frenkel-pairs. An estimate is given for the specific Frenkel-pair resistivity ρHF and for the effective recombination volume V_o . Three well-defined recovery stages were observed at 100 K, 500 K and 610 K respectively, attributed to close-pair recombination, long-range interstitial elimination at vacancies and finally vacancy elimination. A decrease below the resistivity value of unirradiated samples was always noticed above 600 K during the vacancy migration stage and attributed to an order-enhancement process. Such a behavior is discussed by comparison with the recovery of the same alloy after neutron irradiation.