Non-isothermal short-range-order kinetics of binary alloys as influenced by solute-vacancy complexes

A model describing the roles of bound and unbound vacancies is proposed in order to predict defect decay and short-range-order kinetics of quenched binary alloys during linear heating experiments. This is an alternative treatment of a previous approach. The model has been applied to the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) curves of Cu-5 at.% Zn quenched from different temperatures. An expression to calculate the activation energy for migration of solute-vacancy complexes was also developed which make use of DSC trace data. A value of 89.12±0.32 kJ mol^-1 was obtained for the above alloy. The relative contribution of bound and unbound vacancies to partition of effective activation energy corresponding to the ordering process as influenced by quenching temperature was also assessed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.