Amorphous and nanocrystalline Fe-based alloys developed by mechanical alloying

Mechanical alloying (MA) is a technique by which novel materials may synthetised from elemental or pre-alloyed powders via a high-energy ball milling process. During mechanical alloying, powder particles are subjected to severe mechanical deformation and are repeatedly deformed, cold-welded and fractured. Although originally utilised for the synthesis of oxide dispersion strengthened materials, mechanical alloying has been reported to be capable of producing amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys. These materials can be also obtained by rapid solidification techniques. Nevertheless, the shape and size of rapidly quenched alloys are usually restricted to thin rods or ribbons. For it, powder metallurgy processing techniques have been explored as an alternative fabrication method. In this work, we present results obtained by differential scanning calorimetry, scanning electron microscopy, inductive coupled plasma, X-ray diffraction and magnetic hysteresis loops of several Fe based alloys obtained by mechanical alloying.