Structural relaxation of amorphous metallic alloys

The structural factor and a total pair correlation function for amorphous magnetic metal alloys of Fe60.8Co20.2B14Si5 and Fe76.8Ni1.2B13.2Si18.8 is obtained using neutron diffraction method. It is shown that the cryogenic sample processing (during some hours of conditioning at the liquid nitrogen temperature) affects the short-range order (up to similar to 1.2 nm). The short order change is explained in frame of the structural relaxation. It was found that there exists a correlation between the short-range order and magnetic properties. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.