Effect of boron addition on structural and magnetic properties of nanostructured Fe75Al25 alloy prepared by high energy ball milling

• The nanocrystalline (Fe75Al25)100−xBx (x=0, 5, 9 and 12 at%) powders were prepared by mechanical alloying.
• The effect of boron addition on microstructural and magnetic proprieties was studied.
• Soft ferromagnetic materials were obtained with the addition of boron.

In the present work, the effect of boron addition on microstructural and magnetic properties of (Fe75Al25)100−xBx (x=0, 5, 9 and 12 at%) alloys prepared by mechanical alloying process, were investigated by X-ray diffraction and vibrating sample magnetometer and SQUID techniques. The microstructural parameters such as the crystallite size, the microstrain and the lattice parameters of the bcc- solid solution Fe(Al) were deduced from the Rietveld refinement of the X-ray diffraction patterns using the X-Pert HighScore. It is found that boron additions delay the formation of the BCC- Fe(Al) solid solution by mechanical alloying. The coercivity (Hc) decreases with increasing the amount of boron added. The undoped sample showed a hard ferromagnetic behavior (Hc~750 Oe) whereas the doped ones reached a softening ferromagnetic behavior (Hc<100 Oe).