Effects of La on thermal stability, phase formation and magnetic properties of Fe–Co–Ni–Si–B–La high entropy alloys

Abstract

The microstructure, phase formation, thermal stability and soft magnetic properties of melt-spun high entropy alloys (HEAs) Fe27Co27Ni27Si10−xB9Lax with various La substitutions for Si (x = 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, and 1) were investigated in this work. The Fe27Co27Ni27Si10−xB9La0.6 alloy shows superior soft magnetic properties with low coercivity Hc of ~7.1 A/m and high saturation magnetization Bs of 1.07 T. The content of La has an important effect on the primary crystallization temperature (Tx1) and the secondary crystallization temperature (Tx2) of the alloys. After annealing at relatively low temperature, the saturation magnetization of the alloy increases and the microstructure with a small amount of body-centered cubic (BCC) phase embedded in amorphous matrix is observed. Increasing the annealing temperature reduces the magnetization due to the transformation of BCC phase into face-centered cubic (FCC) phase.