Microstructure evolution, stress state and electromagnetic performance of Fe-based nanocrystalline alloy induced by stress-annealing

Abstract

Stress-induced anisotropy has been applied for FeSiBCuNb nanocrystalline alloy ribbons in transformers with large direct current (DC) component. However, the physical mechanism of anisotropy induced by stress annealing during crystallization remains controversial. Here, a systematic study was conducted on the microstructure, residual stress state, dynamic domain structure and properties of the stress-annealed FeSiBCuNb nanocrystalline ribbons. Present results demonstrate that, the increase of the applied stress greatly increases the residual tensile stress and induces lattice distortion, which acts as pinning site during magnetization, resulting in enhanced domain-wall energy and narrower wall width. Meanwhile, stress annealing promotes the flattening of hysteresis loops and decreases the effective permeability, which improves the DC-bias characteristics of the ribbons, thereby promoting the transition from “hard saturation” to “soft saturation” behavior. Also, stress-induced grain refinement is beneficial to obtaining high hardness. Owing to the stress-induced anisotropy, the stress-annealed sample with applied stress of 113 MPa exhibits excellent combined properties, including low constant effective permeability of 438 at wide frequency range (1 kHz–8 MHz), high DC-bias capability of 74% (30 Oe), low power loss of 49 kW/m3 (100 mT, 100 kHz), and high hardness of 644 HV. This discovery provides an insightful understanding of stress-induced anisotropy mechanism on the high-performance Fe-based nanocrystalline alloys.