Quenched-in vacancies in Fe-AL alloys

Quenched-in vacancies in Fe3Al-based intermetallics were studied in this work. A stoichiometric Fe3Al alloy was compared with non-stoichiometric specimens either with a deficiency or with an excess in Al content. Vacancies in specimens quenched from the disordered A2 phase were investigated by three independent techniques of positron annihilation spectroscopy: positron lifetime (LT) studies, slow positron implantation spectroscopy (SPIS) with a continuous slow positron beam, and coincidence Doppler broadening (CDB). It was found that the combination of LT and SPIS enables to determine reliably even very high concentrations of vacancies. Infor-mation about the local chemical environment of quenched-in vacancies was obtained from CDB measurements.