Microscopic study of a lattice defect trapped at in impurities in plastically deformed Al

¹¹¹In doped Al specimes (c _In1 ppm) were cold worked by extension at 77 K to several amounts of strain. The PAC method was applied to study the trapping of lattice defects at the indium impurities between 77 K and 293 K. From electron irradiation experiments it is known that the In probes are suitable traps for self-interstitials in Al. Since in the present experiment no such effect is observed, it is concluded that by extension at 77 K in Al essentially no freely migrating interstitials are created. Between 110 K and 210 K an increasing fraction of the indium impurities traps a well defined defect. The symmetry axis of the resulting indium-defect-complex is found to point along 111 crystallographic directions. It is proposed that the In impurity traps a divacancy at nearest neighbour sites and relaxes into the open space, thus forming an equilateral triangle of three vacancies in a {111} plane with the In atom in its centre. Reasons for the formation of this complex at rather low annealing temperatures are discussed.