Interstitial-impurity interactions in copper-silver and aluminum-magnesium alloys. [Electron beams]

The configurations and dynamical properties of complexes formed between interstitials and oversized impurities in electron-irradiated aluminum and copper were determined. Measurements were taken of the ultrasonic attention and resonant frequency in single crystal samples of Cu-Ag and Al-Mg. A variety of peaks appeared in both materials in plots of the logarithmic decrement versus temperature. The simultaneous presence of multiple defects was established by the different annealing behavior shown by each peak. It was found that interstitial trapping in our oversized systems was generally weaker than in previously studied undersized systems. The principal features in Cu-Ag that must be accounted for by a model include the following: (1) Three low-temperature peaks were seen having trigonal symmetry. The main peak annealed away at 110 K uncorrelated with any resistivity recovery and it grew at 60 K, correlated with a resistivity decrease. For Al-MG, the principal features associated with the main peak include: seen at high temperature (>135 K) having trigonal symmetry; annealed away at 127 K and seemed to correlate with a resistivity decrease; remaining peaks grew while the main peak annealed away. The implications of an existing model were developed. No evidence was found for the deeply-trapped <110>-orthorhombic defect predicted by the existing model. Therefore, two alternative models were developed. Model A uses a canted dumb-bell at the next-nearest neighbor position to explain the results. Model B uses a point interstitial at an octahedral position. A distinction between the two which is subject to experimental check is that model A predicts that interstitial migration between different impurity atoms occurs near 127 K in Cu-Ag while model B predicts a migration temperature near 60 K