Glass-to-crystalline transformation in rapidly quenched Fe<inf>78</inf>B<inf>9</inf>Si<inf>13</inf> ferromagnetic alloy

Calorimetric studies of the ferromagnetic Curie temperature Tc, and the crystallization kinetics of the metallic glass Fe78B9Si13 have been performed in an attempt to elucidate the possibility of reversible relaxation processes near Tc and the crystallization mechanisms taking place. From the change of Tc with heating rate and on annealing it appears that ageing irreversibly increases the Curie temperature. Crystallization is thermally activated following an Arrhenius behaviour and proceeds in two stages, the best fit to the experimental data for each stage of crystallization has been obtained by use of a Johnson-Mehl-Avrami-Erofe'ev equation. The effective activation energy and the kinetic exponent are respectively E = (4.7 ± 0.1) eV, n = 2.0 ± 0.2 for the first and E = (4.5 ± 0.1) eV, n = 4.0 ± 0.2 for the second stage of crystallization. From these results it appears that the mechanisms of crystallization are quite different in both stages. © 1984.