On the Apparent Activation Energy for Clustering in Dilute Al-Zn Alloys

The clustering phenomenon was observed when dilute Al-Zn alloys were annealed at temperatures higher than the solvus of the G.P.zones. In this report the apparent activation energy for clustering is estimated and compared with the experimental results. The estimated value of the apparent activation energy for clustering in several Al-Zn alloys comes to 0.51 eV, which is larger than the effective migration energy 0.43 eV of Zn atoms in Al-Zn alloys.