Time–dependent nature and origin of displacive transformation

We have investigated athermal and isothermal martensitic transformations (typical displacive transformations) in Fe–Ni and Fe–Ni–Cr alloys under pulsed and static magnetic fields and hydrostatic pressures in order to understand the time-dependent nature of martensitic transformation, that is, the kinetics of martensitic transformation. Also, we have calculated electronic structures of B2 and ζ′2 phases in AuCd by FLAPW and/or LAPW methods in order to understand the origin of B2–ζ′2 transformation. The following results were obtained. (i) The two transformation processes are closely related to each other, that is, the athermal process changes to the isothermal process under a hydrostatic pressure and the isothermal process changes to the athermal one under a magnetic field. (ii) These findings of (i) can be explained by the phenomenological theory, which gives a unified explanation for the two transformation processes previously proposed by our group. (iii) The calculation of the generalized susceptibility, x(q), for the B2 phase of AuCd shows that there exists a nesting vector of near 1/3<110>2Π/a as in the B2 phase of TiNi calculated previously. The density of states at the Fermi energy of the ζ′2 phase is lower than that of the B2 phase, which is similar to the case of B2–R transformation in TiNi previously calculated.