On the magnetic anisotropy in Fe78Si9B13 ingots and amorphous ribbons: Orientation aligning of Fe-based phases/clusters

Magnetic anisotropy in Fe-based amorphous ribbon plays an important role in various applications and is still not fully understood. To gain an in-depth understanding of this phenomenon, the structure and magnetic properties of Fe78Si9B13 master alloy ingots and melt-spun amorphous ribbons were measured by various techniques. For the ingot samples, both the <100>α-Fe and <001>Fe2B axes are aligned parallel with the radial direction (RD) of the original cylindrical ingot, i.e. the maximum temperature gradient direction, and their other orthogonal axes have several preferred directions in the plane vertical to RD. The hard magnetic axis of the ingot samples is parallel to RD, which is due to the large magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy difference between <001> and {001} of the Fe2B phase. For the amorphous ribbons, there is an in-plane magnetic anisotropy: the easy or hard axis of magnetization is aligned on the plane of the ribbon, and parallel to or at an angle of about 60° to its width direction, respectively. According to the structural heredity between the melts and glasses/crystals during solidification, we deduce that the magnetic anisotropy in the ribbon plane is ascribed to the orientation alignment of Fe-Si and Fe-B clusters, i.e. a hidden order beyond short-range order, in Fe78Si9B13 amorphous ribbons.