Low-temperature ordering in a substitutional alloy with injecting nonequilibrium vacancies: The FePt case

Achieving the compositionally ordered state in a substitutional alloy of two or more species can often be even critical for improving its functional properties. To produce a highly ordered alloy, a longtime high-temperature (up to T=1000 K) treatment of the alloy is typically necessary because of insufficient vacancy concentration (c_v) and their mobility. However, such processing affects the morphology and complicates the technology of functional alloys. We show theoretically that the ordering in the practically important FePt system (Fe_xPt_1-x with x being close to 0.5) is already achievable at T=450 K for reasonable times t