Structural and thermodynamic properties of heavily mechanically deformed Ru and AlRu

We report on high-energy ball milling of Ru and AlRu. The deformation results in a drastic decrease of the crystal size to a nanometer scale and in an increase of atomic-level strain. This is accompanied by a disordering of the crystal lattice as is shown by means of the long-range-order parameter in AlRu. The specific heat increases by more than 15%–20%, indicating large changes in the vibrational and configurational part of the entropy. The stored energy of cold work is up to 6 kJ/mol for AlRu and 10 kJ/mol for Ru. This is almost 40% of the heat of fusion of Ru and exceeds by far the energies stored by other deformation processes.