Synthesis and characterization of Fe/sub 50/ Cr/sub 14/ Mo/sub 14/ C/sub 14/ B/sub 6/ Gd/sub 2/ bulk amorphous steel

Bulk amorphous steels (BASs) are a promising class of advanced materials containing very attractive physical, thermal and mechanical properties and have applications as structural materials. Bulk amorphous steel with composition Fe/sub 50/Cr/sub 14/Mo/sub 14/ C/sub 14/B/sub 6/Gd/sub 2/ was designed following the Greer's confusion principle and synthesized by arc-melting and Cu mould casting techniques. Characterization was done by techniques of XRD. Moossbauer spectroscopy, DSC and SEM/EDS. In order to study crystallization behaviour, samples were annealed at various temperatures and activation energies of first and second stage crystallization were calculated by Kissinger and Ozawa equations. Mechanical properties like Vicker's hardness, nanaohardness elastic modulus and elastic recovery etc. of as-cast and annealed samples were measured. Phases like Cr/sub 23/C/sub 6/ and eta- Fe/sub 3/Mo/sub 3/C were identified in the annealed samples. It is concluded that the present steel can be synthesized in the bulk form and have good properties as compared to conventional steels. (author)