Tensile stress influence on coercive properties in Fe-rich cold-drawn amorphous wires

Magnetization reversal process has been studied in ferromagnetic amorphous wires of nominal composition Fe77.5B15Si7.5 prepared by the cold-drawing technique. Conventional hysteresis loops were measured by the fluxmetric method in the presence of the tensile stress. The measurements have been performed by short movable coils. Application of tensile stress results in increase of the remanent magnetization and decrease of the switching field. When the tensile stress is high enough, the shape of hysteresis loop is perfectly rectangular that is associated with quick enough reversals of magnetization. These hysteresis loops could be considered as quasi-magnetically bistable, but it is not exactly the standard bistability. The experiments with short movable coils have demonstrated that two domain walls (in contrast with the case of the standard bistability) propagation is responsible for the remagnetization process of the inner core. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.