A study of densification and phase transformations of nanocomposite Cu-Fe prepared by mechanical alloying and consolidation process

The purpose of this study is an attempt to obtain nanocrystalline bulk Cu-40 at.% Fe alloy by mechanical alloying followed by consolidation process under 7 GPa and annealing. The transformations occurring in the material were studied by the use of X-ray diffraction. The structural investigations revealed that consolidation enabled supersaturated Cu(Fe) to precipitate out Cu4Fe and CuFe4 intermetallics. A limited grain growth was noticed after annealing. The results of microhardness have shown that the hardening increases similarly up to 40 h milling. The variation of microhardness as a function of the reciprocal square root of the grain size demonstrates that the rate of hardening is similar to that predicted by the Hall-Petch behavior.