Amorphous and Nanocrystalline Soft Magnetic Materials: Tailoring of Magnetic Properties, Magnetoelastic and Transport Properties

Abstract

It Is now nearly 30 years since the first metallic glass was produced by rapid quenching from the liquid state by Miroshnitchenko and Salli (Miroshnichenko and Salli, 1959) and Duwez et al. (Duwez et al., 1966; Klement et al., 1970). This proved to be a crucial point in opening up new fields of research in material science, magnetism and technology, such as metastable crystalline phases and structures, extended solid solubilities of solutes with associated improvements of mechanical and physical properties, nanocrystalline, nanocomposite and amorphous materials which, in some cases, have unique combinations of properties (magnetic, mechanical, corrosion, etc.). Technological development of the fabrication technique and studies of the structure, glass formation ability and thermodynamics and magnetism of amorphous alloys were intensively performed in 1960s–1970s. Main attention was paid to amorphous ribbons. These aspects have been extensively analyzed in few review papers and books (Duwez, 1966; Jones, 1973; Luborsky, 1983).