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

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 2.5 mm is reached at [Si-B2Fe7.7Hf0.3]Fe (in at.%: Fe72.5B16.7Si8.3Hf2.5). This glassy alloy shows a high fracture strength similar to 4000 MPa with a plastic strain of 0.5%, a high saturation magnetization similar to 1.45 T and a low coercive force similar to 1.5 A/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. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.