New stable icosahedral quasicrystal in the system Al–Cu–Co–Fe

• Published in: Journal of alloys and compounds 2019-09, Vol.801, p.478-482
• Main Authors: Klyueva, Maria, Shulyatev, Dmitry, Andreev, Nikolay, Tabachkova, Natalia, Sviridova, Tatiana, Suslov, Alexey
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aluminum; Chemical composition; Cobalt; Cooling rate; Copper; Electron diffraction; Electronic transport; Icosahedral phase; Icosahedral quasicrystal; Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry; Iron; Mass spectrometry; Organic chemistry; Phase diagrams; Quasicrystals; Single-grain quasicrystals; Temperature; X ray analysis
• ISSN: 0925-8388; 1873-4669
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jallcom.2019.06.056

Based on the conceptual Al–Cu–(Fe + Co) phase diagram we found an optimal initial composition and developed a method to grow Al–Cu–Fe–Co single-grain quasicrystals. Our original two-stage cooling process includes (i) fast cooling of the melt down to the quasicrystalline single phase region with rate of ∼165 K/h to prevent growing of nonquasicrystalline phases in the melt, and (ii) slow cooling down with rate of ∼2–3 K/h to grow large (mm-size) single-grain quasicrystals. As a result a new stable quaternary Al-based icosahedral quasicrystal has been obtained. The chemical composition of the grown quasicrystal determined by both the energy dispersive X-ray analysis and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was Al64.36Cu22.20Co3.05Fe10.39. Powder XRD and selected area electron diffraction were carried out for the phase identification and confirmed the icosahedral structure. The temperature dependencies of the electrical resistance measured on the oriented samples in the temperature range of 1.4 K–300 K is typical for icosahedral quasicrystals. •We constructed conceptual Al–Cu–(Fe + Co) phase diagram.•We used two-stage cooling process to grow quaternary Al–Cu–Fe–Co quasicrystals.•We grew single-grain icosahedral Al64.36Cu22.20Co3.05Fe10.39 stable quasicrystal.