Formation and structure-property correlation of new bulk Fe–B–Si–Hf metallic glasses

Abstract

The present work is devoted to designing new Fe–B–Si–Hf multi-component bulk glassy alloys with good soft magnetic and mechanical properties, and also explored the structure-property correlation in the microalloyed Fe–B–Si amorphous alloy with Hf. Based on the cluster-plus-glue-atom model, a series of Fe–B–Si–Hf alloys with cluster formulas [Si–B2Fe8−xHfx]Fe (x=0–0.6) are produced. Our experiments show that a large glass-forming ability along with a critical glass formation size of 2.5mm is reached at [Si–B2Fe7.7Hf0.3]Fe (in at.%: Fe72.5B16.7Si8.3Hf2.5). This glassy alloy shows a high fracture strength ~4000MPa with a plastic strain of 0.5%, a high saturation magnetization ~1.45T and a low coercive force ~1.5A/m. The monotonic variations of the thermal glass stability, microhardness and the magnetic ordering parameters with the concentration of micro-alloying element Hf, the accessibility of calorimetric glass transition and the glass-forming ability of the Fe–B–Si–Hf glassy alloys are explained in terms of the intra- and inter-atomic cluster correlations in the amorphous structures.