Influence of cube texture development on magnetic properties of Ni-5 at.%W alloy substrates

The metallic Ni-5 at.%W (Ni5W) substrate with sharp cube texture is found as one of the promising candidates used for fabrication of coated conductors. However, the alternating current (AC) loss, partly contributed by the ferromagnetic Ni5W substrate is unavoidable. In this work, we analyzed the evolution of magnetic properties of Ni5W substrates via the cube texture development. The results revealed that the cube texture has an important impact related to size advantage during recrystallization, leading towards the consumption of the deformation and other orientational grains, and hence giving rise to form a sharp cube texture. Increasing the annealing temperature, the grain size is found to be increased. In the fully developed cube-textured substrate, the grain boundary was replaced by small angle grain boundaries (SAGBs). Also the magnetic domain structure was transformed from 180°-structure to a branched one with the increasing annealing temperature. This transformation is dependent on the increase of grain size, particularly, the SAGBs plays an important role in the formation of perfect domain structure. Increased coercivity and hysteresis loss in the fully textured substrate can be attributed towards the ideal cube texture and perfect complex domain structure. Therefore, a potential solution has been proposed to resolve this limitation of the sharp cube texture and increased hysteresis loss in Ni5W substrates.