Effect of excess vacancies on antiphase domain growth in Fe₃Al

The growth of the D0₃-type antiphase domain (APD) in Fe ₃Al was investigated focusing on the effect of excess vacancies that were introduced during the quenching process from the disordered state. The variation in the APD size exhibited considerable deviation from the conventional "parabolic growth law" in the early stage of APD growth. This variation was numerically calculated on the assumption that the migration of the APD boundaries was enhanced by non-equilibrium excess vacancies and the vacancy concentration decreased during the isothermal annealing for the APD growth. The calculated variations in the APD size could be successfully fitted to the experimental results in cases with quenching temperatures (T_q) of 873 K or 1073 K, but not when T_q was 1273 K. The APD growth in the latter case was much slower than the expected growth derived from the calculation. This discrepancy was attributed to the rapid decrease in the vacancy concentration due to vacancy clustering since a significant amount of dotted contrasts were observed in TEM image of only the specimen quenched from 1273K.