Vacancies are introduced into the crystal phase during quenching of rapid solidified materials. Cavity formation occurs because of the coalescence of the vacancies into a cluster. However, because of the high mobility of vacancies at high temperature, most of them will diffuse back into the liquid phase, and some will be lost to defects such as dislocations. Oxygen is known to stabilize cavities by decreasing the surface energy through a chemisorption process. These stabilized cavities, furthermore, act as effective nucleation sites for precipitates to form during aging. Four different types of powders with different oxygen contents were prepared by gas atomization processing. The atomized powders were then consolidated by hot extrusion at 900 °C with an extrusion ratio 10,5:1. After consolidation, specimens were heat treated at 1000 °C for 1 hr followed by water quenching. Finally, the specimens were aged at 600 °C for about 800 hrs. TEM samples were prepared from the gripends of tensile specimens of both unaged and aged alloys.
