As molten iron cools it crystallizes at 1538 °C into its δ allotrope, which has a body-centered cubic (bcc) crystal structure. As it cools further to 1394 °C, it changes to its γ-iron allotrope, a face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal structure, or austenite. At 912 °C and below, the crystal structure again becomes the bcc α-iron allotrope, or ferrite. Finally, at 770 °C (the Curie point, Tc) iron becomes magnetic. As the iron passes through the Curie temperature there is no change in crystalline structure, but there is a change in domain structure, where each domain contains iron atoms with a particular electronic spin. In unmagnetized iron, all the electronic spins of the atoms within one domain are in the same direction, however, the neighboring domains point in various other directions and thus over all they cancel each other out. As a result, the iron is unmagnetized. In magnetized iron, the electronic spins of all the domains are aligned, so that the magnetic effects of neighboring domains reinforce each other. Although each domain contains billions of atoms, they are very small, about 10 micrometres across.[10] At pressures above approximately 10 GPa and temperatures of a few hundred kelvin or less, α-iron changes into a hexagonal close-packed (hcp) structure, which is also known as ε-iron; the higher-temperature γ-phase also changes into ε-iron, but does so at higher pressure. The β-phase, if it exists, would appear at pressures of at least 50 GPa and temperatures of at least 1500 K; it has been thought to have an orthorhombic or a double hcp structure.[9]
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 15:23:53 +0000
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