材料期刊网

The melt-spinning technique was used to prepare a nanocrystalline (nc) Hf11Ni89 ribbon. Both electron and X-ray diffraction show that the as-quenched sample is HfNi5 single-phased with a grain size about 10 nm. The measurement of its magnetic properties indicate that a partial ferromagnetic phase corresponding to about 0.5% pure Ni precipitate exists in the as-quenched sample, while the HfNi5 matrix is paramagnetic at least down to 5 K. Since diffraction techniques including high-resolution electron microscopy were unable to reveal the existence of another distinct phase, this small ferromagnetic magnetization component can be tentatively ascribed to a Ni-enriched interfacial phase. The magnetic characteristics of this phase were found to have normal distributions, indicating that there is no special factor to dominate its formation. (C) 1997 Acta Metallurgica Inc.