Studying nearest neighbor correlations by atom probe tomography (APT) in metallic glasses as exemplified for Fe40Ni40B20 glassy ribbons

Highlights: ► Microstructural characterization of Fe40Ni40B20 metallic glass ribbon. ► Statistical treatment of the atom probe data reveals a pronounced elemental inhomogeneity for the annealed state. ► NNE algorithm allows specifying atom positions and chemical identities of the next neighboring atoms in real space. ► Next neighbor evaluation algorithm evinces a steric periodicity of the neighboring atoms. ► A comparison of as quenched and annealed states shows incipient steps to Ni-rich boride formation. - Abstract: A next nearest neighbor evaluation procedure of atom probe tomography data provides distributions of the distances between atoms. The width of these distributions for metallic glasses studied so far is a few Angstrom reflecting the spatial resolution of the analytical technique. However, fitting Gaussian distributions to the distribution of atomic distances yields average distances with statistical uncertainties of 2 to 3 hundredth of an Angstrom. Fe40Ni40B20 metallic glass ribbons are characterized this way in the as quenched state and for a state heat treated at 350 °C for 1 h revealing a change in the structure on the sub-nanometer scale. By applying the statistical tool of the χ2 test a slight deviation from a random distribution of B-atoms in the as quenched sample is perceived, whereas a pronounced elemental inhomogeneity of boron is detected for the annealed state. In addition, the distance distribution of the first fifteen atomic neighbors is determined by using this algorithm for both annealed and as quenched states. The next neighbor evaluation algorithm evinces a steric periodicity of the atoms when the next neighbor distances are normalized by the first next neighbor distance. A comparison of the nearest neighbor atomic distribution for as quenched and annealed state shows accumulation of Ni and B. Moreover, it also reveals the tendency of Fe and B to move slightly away from each other, an incipient step to Ni rich boride formation.