Neutron depolarization study of internal stresses in amorphous Fe40Ni40B20

Abstract

The magnetic domain structure of amorphous ferromagnets with nonzero magnetostriction is mainly determined by the internal stress state because of the magneto-elastic coupling. The stress and field dependence of the domain structure contains important information on the internal stresses in the material. The three-dimensional neutron depolarization technique has been used to study the stress- and field-dependence of the bulk domain structures in both as-quenched and annealed ribbons of the metallic glass Fe40Ni40B20. A three-layer domain structure model corresponding to compressive and tensile internal stresses is presented to explain the measured data. The influence of surface roughness on the interpretation of neutron depolarization measurements in amorphous ribbons is discussed. Finally, the internal stress relaxation due to the annealing is explained in terms of the viscous behaviour of the glass.