Mössbauer Analysis of Deformation–Induced Acceleration of Short-Range Concentration Separation in Fe-Cr Alloys—Effect of the Substitution Impurity: Sb and Au

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is dealing with the effect of doping the ferrite alloy Fe–16Cr by the oversized impurities Sb and Au on the mechanism of the short‐range ordering induced by severe plastic deformation using the Mössbauer spectroscopy. The manuscript is written in a good manner. Results are satisfactory and conclusions are consistent with the results. The English of the manuscript is acceptable, however, minor typos and grammatical errors are observed. Native speaker should check the manuscript. Personally, I would welcome to extend the main reasons of the study in the manuscript: what is the purpose/ what are obvious benefits for practical application of this method? Generally, I recommend this manuscript for publication in Metals.

Author Response

Dear Sir,

We greatly appreciate your estimate of our work. We tried to meet your requirements.

We added to the text of Introduction an additional motivation regarding the practice-related significance of the work.

“The SRO (order) formation as the initial stage of phase transitions affects the alloy properties and, in particular, the stability of the structure in conditions of intense irradiation and deformation-related effects. In this regard, studies of short-range ordering in Fe-Cr alloys, as well as of the effect exerted on this ordering by introduced impurities, – are important along with the fact that bcc Fe-Cr alloys are the basis of irradiation-resistant stainless steels of the ferrite–martensite class of such materials [10]”.

Yours truly,

the authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Meanwhile the Mössbauer technique and analysis is profusely describe in the paper, I can not find such deep on PAS measurements and the correlation with experiments.

Are the authors performing such measurements or are they obtained from literature? In that case, please be more specific. 

Author Response

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your close peer-reviewing.

We presented in the manuscript a reference on the works that employ PAS [11, 12] for investigating the effect of an impurity on the evolution of defects of vacancy origin in the electron-irradiated Fe and Fe-Cr alloys. In the caption to Fig.6, we give a reference to the work [11] that the data on PAS regarding Fe-Cr (Fe-Cr-Sb, Fe-Cr-Au) alloys are borrowed from. Moreover, we – being the authors – in the section Acknowledgments mention that «The authors express their thanks to A.L. Nikolaev for providing the samples, data (published in [11]), and helpful discussions».

With best regards,

the authors

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript is dedicated to studying the effect of Sb and Au impurities in the alloys Fe–16Cr on the processes of short-range ordering using the Mössbauer spectroscopy and positron annihilation data. In my opinion the manuscript is written very carefully and clearly, contains the original and interesting results. I have no questions or suggestions and recommend publishing this manuscript after one small correction.

1. Please write what the abbreviation SRO means when you use it for the first time in the text of manuscript (line 56).

Author Response

Dear Sir,

We greatly appreciate your estimate of our work!

Everything that You’ve asked to is executed (line 39).

Yours truly,

the authors