Ball milled Mn-doped iron silicides synthetized from Fe-Mn premixtures

J. DESIMONI; S.M. COTES; M.A.TAYLOR; J. RUNCO

Salón Dorado del Palacio Municipal, La Plata, Argentin

Conferencia; 35th Anniversary Hyperfine Interactions at La Plata; 2005

Departamento de Fisica-UNLP

The Fe-Si system is complex because, depending on the experimental conditions of synthesis, several stable and metastable phases can be produced. Non-equilibrium processing techniques like mechanical alloying allow the formation of compounds and metastable phases which are not accessible by conventional techniques. In particular, semiconducting b-FeSi2 disilicide have attracted the attention in the last years due to its technological potential in the field of optoelectronic and as a suitable material for thermoelectric conversion [1]. The doping with Mn has intriguing fundamental issues related to the occurrence of metastable phases arising from the structural differences between iron and manganese silicides and related to the occupancy of the two non-equivalent Fe sites in the b-FeSi2 structure [2], as well.              In the present work,  a study of the sequence of phase formation in powders of stoichiometric Fe1-xMnxSi2 (0.00