Rapid crystallization of amorphous alloys

Recently Koster et al have reported an interesting result on the crystallization behavior of the Fe73.4Cu1Nb3.1Is13.4B9.1 amorphous alloy (FINEMET) under electrical pulse heating: the in situ time-resolved X-ray diffraction revealed a shift in the α-Fe (110)-peak position from d = 0.204 nm to 0.202 nm during the crystal growth, indicating a significant change in the composition with increasing crystal diameter. This key result may evidently give new information on the structure of the amorphous alloy before and during the crystallization. However the result has not yet been fully understood and further experiments are needed to clarify the structure effect on the crystallization behavior of amorphous metallic alloys. In this paper, the authors make diffraction measurements of some amorphous alloys after short-time annealing in a tin bath. The results obtained for Fe73.5Cu1Nb3S13.5B9 and Fe78Is9B14 amorphous alloys are reported. The cluster model of an amorphous state is used to explain these results