A positron annihilation study of vacancy-type defects in Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystals

A positron annihilation study of the icosahedral Al-Cu-Fe alloy system has been carried out using both Doppler broadening and lifetime measurement techniques. Isochronal annealing studies show that a nearly unchanged two-component lifetime spectrum is obtained up to the highest annealing temperature of 4500C used in the present work, indicating the stability of the structure and the defect state in this quasicrystalline phase up to this annealing temperature. The vacancy defect concentration is about 8 ppm which is higher than that observed in our earlier study on icosahedral Al-Mn-Si, though the vacancy size is lower - approximately a monovacancy size on average in Al-Cu-Fe against a divacancy size in Al-Mn-Si. The existence of such a high concentration of vacancy defects even in quasicrystalline Al-Cu-Fe, which has little phason disorder, should be significant from the point of view of developing a structural model for quasicrystals. It appears that a two-component positron lifetime spectrum indicative of a high concentration of vacancy-type defects is characteristic of the icosahedral quasicrystalline phase. The possibility of a central hole in the icosahedral building block in this phase is ruled out from our positron annihilation experiments. (author)