Evolution of structural and magnetic properties of the FeCuBP amorphous alloy during annealing

In this work an attempt has been made to investigate the evolution of the structural and soft magnetic properties of the Fe80.8Cu1.2B10P8 amorphous alloy during annealing. The alloy ribbons, both melt spun and annealed, are characterized by differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffractometry, Mossbauer spectroscopy and magnetometry. Atomic regions in the amorphous structure tend to transform from Fe3B-to FeB-like chemical short-range order with annealing before crystallization, which results in the number increasement of Fe clusters in the amorphous matrix and contributes to the optimization of magnetic properties during structural relaxation. Moreover, Mossbauer spectroscopy also indirectly manifests the formation of CuP clusters during pre-annealing process, which is believed to be effective in providing heterogeneous nucleation sites in amorphous precursors and refining a-Fe grains in nanocrystallized alloy ribbons. With pre-annealing at appropriate temperature, we tuned the content of CuP clusters in the amorphous phase to promote Fe80.8Cu1.2B10P8 nanocrystalline alloy exhibiting much excellent soft magnetic properties. (C) 2017 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.