Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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MM: Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 3: Symposium Modern Metallic Materials Design I

MM 3.6: Talk

Monday, March 27, 2006, 12:00–12:15, IFW B

Single-crystal growth of the complex metallic alloy β-Al-Mg. — •Marta Lipińska-Chwałek, Sergiy Balanetskyy, Carsten Thomas, and Michael Feuerbacher — Institut fuer Festkoerperforschung, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, 52425 Juelich, Germany

β-Al3Mg2 phase is a complex metallic alloy based on a giant unit cell (a=2.8 nm) containing approximately 1168 atoms. The material is very interesting also because of its low specific weight (2.2 g/cm3). Hardly any studies have been carried out on the physical properties of β-Al3Mg2. This is most probably due to the fact that until recently, high-quality single crystalline sample material was unavailable. We present the development of a single-crystal growth route for β-Al3Mg2. The phase diagram was probed in the vicinity of the existence range of β-phase. We approached the growth employing various techniques, the most successful of which turned out to be Czochralski- and self-flux-growth. With both of them we reproducibly achieved single crystals of several cubic centimeters. While the Czochralski technique allows for the production of deliberately oriented single crystals, the self-flux technique is capable of the production of very large single grains. The size of which is only limited by the crucible volume. The material produced is now successfully used for the physical property investigations.