Structural and magnetic disorder in Nd 90-x Fe x Al 10 glassy hard magnets

The scattering functions have been measured for Nd90-xFexAl10 (x=35–50) amorphous melt-spun ribbons with thicknesses up to 120 μm at temperatures between 15 and 300 K. The data have been used to model the atomic structures using the reverse Monte Carlo (RMC) method. The RMC models confirm the existence of very small Fe-based atomic clusters, quenching conditions dependent and distributed isotropically in the Nd-rich amorphous matrix. We proposed a structure consisting of a packing of nanometer-sized clusters for these easy glass-forming Nd–Fe-based amorphous alloys.