Mechanical alloying of immiscible Pb-Al binary system by high energy ball milling

In the present work, mechanical alloying has been applied to the Pb-Al immiscible binary system by using the method of high energy ball milling. The microstructural features of the milled powder, such as grain size, lattice constant and morphology of phases have been studied by X-ray diffraction, analytical transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Besides, energy dispersive spectroscopy was used to analysis chemical composition of phases presented after milling. Differential Scanning Calorimetry measurement was also made on the milled Pb-Al powder. The results show that homogenous blending of Pb and Al can be easily achieved by high energy ball milling in spite of their mutual immiscibility and large difference in density. The obtained alloy exhibits nanocrystalline microstructure. Further more, the experiment result implies the formation of supersaturated solid solution in immiscible Pb-Al system by high energy ball milling. (C) 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers.