Effect of the current annealing (without and with tensile stress) on the soft magnetic behaviour of Fe73.5-x(Co0.5Ni0.5)xSi13.5B9Nb3Cu1 alloy ribbons (x = 2.5, 5 and 10).

Experimental data on microstructural (crystalline volume fraction, grain size) and magnetic (coercive field) properties in amorphous and nanocrystalline Fe73.5-x(Co0.5Ni0.5)xSi13.5B9Nb3Cu1 alloy ribbons (x = 2.5, 5 and 10) are presented. Nanocrystalline structure was developed by annealing the precursor amorphous ribbons by current annealing (CA) and stress-current-annealing (SA). Microstructural analysis of the treated ribbons using X-ray Diffraction showed a high content of amorphous phase in the bulk. In addition, substantial changes in the crystalline state such as grain size of the samples annealed at different conditions were observed. The alloy composition also affects greatly the grain size,: increasing the (Co,Ni) content leads to higher values of the average grain size. The evolutions of the coercive field with the two kinds of thermal treatment were analysed, allowing us to conclude that the addition of (Co,Ni) tends to reduce the magnetic softness character of the original material, while the treated SA samples show higher coercivities higher than those treated without by CA.