Vacancy-interstitial annihilation in titanomagnetite by thermal annealing

This paper is concerned with the annealing kinetics of point defects giving rise - in the presence of Ti4+-induced internal stresses - to pronounced, thermally activated magnetic after-effects (MAEs) near 450, 200 and 65 K in single-crystalline titanomagnetites Fe3-x-¿Ti xO4 of composition 0.1 1000 K, yielded coincident kinetics of reaction order ¿ = 2 and recombination enthalpy Q = 2.45 ± 0.05 eV -as being compatible with bimolecular defect (vacancy) - anti-defect (interstitial) recombination. The delayed recovery of the 65 K peak (at T = 1100 K) points to a stress-sensitive relaxation mechanism, being deactivated only with the final annihilation of stress-producing anisotropic defects. © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.