Nanocrystals magnetic contribution to FINEMET-type soft magnetic materials with Ge addition

Over the last years several works have been published in which magnetic and structural properties of soft magnetic nanocrystalline alloys were reported. Among these, there are a series of articles where the nanocrystals composition of FINEMET-type alloys with Ge addition was obtained by Moessbauer spectroscopy (MS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). By considering a linear relationship between the magnetic moments of the nanocrystals and the composition of various elements in these crystallites, the magnetic moment of the nanocrystals was calculated. This paper reviews results obtained by different authors since 1980 and they are compared with ours. In turn, we revised some elements not previously considered for the calculus of the nanocrystals composition that allowed us to obtain the magnetic moment of the crystallites in the alloy. In particular, we analyzed FINEMET-type alloys with replacement of B for Ge: Fe73.5Si13.5Ge2B7Nb3Cu1 and Fe73.5Si13.5Ge4B5Nb3Cu1. The nanocrystalline structure was obtained by isothermal annealing of melt-spun ribbons at 823 K for 1 h. From MS and XRD we obtained the atomic composition of the nanocrystals in the magnetic material. The magnetic contribution of the nanocrystals to the alloy was calculated using a linear model and the results were compared with experimental measurements of the samples.