X-ray powder diffraction study of multilayer polytypes formation induced by mechanical milling of Laves phases Co2+xNb

The transformations of the initial C15-type Laves compound Co(2+x)Nb into multilayer Laves phase polytypes induced by processing in planetary ball mill have been studied by means of X-ray diffraction analysis. The method has been proposed for fast simulation of X-ray powder diffraction patterns of any complex Laves phase polytype both containing stacking faults and faultless. It is shown that stacking sequence correlates with energy intensity of the process rather than with integrated energy dose transferred to the powder. (orig.)