Soft Ferromagnetic Bulk Metallic Glasses with Enhanced Mechanical Properties

Fe-based bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have gained considerable interest due to their excellent soft magnetic properties with high saturation magnetization, high electrical resistivity, very good corrosion resistance, low materials cost, extremely high mechanical strength and hardness. In spite of having excellent strength, Fe-based BMGs are not used as structural materials in service, so far. The major obstacle is their inherent brittleness under mechanical loading, once a crack is developed the material fails catastrophically. Owing to the ever growing industrial demand for the materials with outstanding properties, aside from exploring new alloy compositions, it is pertinent to understand why or why-not the existing system work and how to improve their properties. Recent reports suggested that the plastic deformability can be enhanced by introducing different microstructural heterogeneities such as free volume enhanced regions, separated phases, nano-crystals, atomic clusters caused by for instance additions of small amount of soft elements. Understanding the effect of addition of soft elements to Fe-based BMGs on thermal stability, structural evolution, magnetic and mechanical properties are the main point which this work addresses. In this work, a study on two different soft ferromagnetic Fe-based glass forming alloys are presented, both of them known to have very high mechanical strength and excellent soft magnetic properties but so far have not been used in any industrial applications. The important issue is with the brittle behavior of this BMGs, particularly under mechanical loading. In each glass forming alloys, the aim was to find out the optimum quantity of the soft elements (Cu and Ga), which can be added to improve their room temperature plastic deformability without affecting the glass forming ability (GFA) and soft magnetic properties. The first glass forming alloy that is studied is Fe36Co36B19.2Si4.8Nb4. This glass forming alloy is highly sensitive to the impurities, only pure elements were used to form this alloy. The addition of only 0.5 at.% Cu completely changes the thermal stability and structural evolution but it also improves the mechanical properties. In case of Ga addition up to 1.5 at.% the crystallization behavior remains unaltered and the thermal stability improves marginally. The addition of Ga improves the plastic deformability of the glass by forming soft zones, whose melting point is much lower compared to rest of the alloy. These soft zones are responsible for the plastic deformation of this glass. Thus addition of Ga is very beneficial in improving the mechanical properties of this Fe-based BMG. In the second part, Fe74Mo4P10C7.5B2.5Si2 glass forming alloy is studied. Unlike the aforementioned alloy, this glass forming alloy is not very sensitive to the impurities, industrial grade alloy elements can also be used to form this alloy. In this alloy addition of Cu is beneficial only up to 0.5 at.%, beyond that Cu addition deteriorates GFA and magnetic properties. In case of Ga addition up to 2 at.% the crystallization behavior remains unaltered and the thermal stability improves marginally. Similar to the FeCoBSiNb glass, the addition of Ga in FeMoPCBSi glass also improves the plastic deformability of the glass by formation of soft zones. Addition of small at.% Ga proved be an viable solution to improve the plastic deformability in the ferromagnetic Fe-based metallic glasses without compromising on thermal and magnetic properties of the glass. In the final part we tried to cast the Fe74Mo4P10C7.5B2.5Si2 glass in a complex shape using an industrial high pressure die casting (HPDC) set up. The important issues were with the casting alloy temperature, casting speed and die material. The aim of our work was to optimize the die material suitable for casting the BMGs and then address the issues with casting temperature and casting speed. We have thus attempted to gain a basic knowledge in casting the Fe-based BMG in industrial scale. Our effort was tremendously successful, we were able to produce fully amorphous complex shaped samples with excellent surface finish. We have thus made a considerable advancement towards understanding the basics behind improving the room temperature plastic deformability in Fe36Co36B19.2Si4.8Nb4 and Fe74Mo4P10C7.5B2.5Si2 ferromagnetic BMGs. We have also made a considerable progress in industrialization of bulk ferromagnetic BMGs