EXAFS Studies and Microwave Magnetic Properties of FeGaB Thin Films and FeCuZr Ball-Milled Alloys

X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) is a spectroscopic technique which can investigate the physical and chemical structure of materials at the atomic scale. X-rays are applied in this technique to be near and above the binding energy of a particular core electronic level of a particular atomic species. Over the last decades, XAFS has emerged as a highly informative probe of the local structure around selected atomic species in solids, liquids, and molecular gases. It offers both element specificity and local structure sensitivity. Foremost among its strengths are its ability to probe the local atomic environments of different elements in the sample by selecting the corresponding incident X-ray energy. In the first part of this thesis, FeGaB alloys, which are of value as soft magnetic materials having relatively large magnetostriction coefficient, were fabricated in which varying amounts of boron were added to the host FeGa alloy to investigate its impact upon local atomic structure and magnetic and microwave properties. The impact of B upon the local atomic structure in FeGaB films were investigated by extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) analysis. EXAFS fitting results revealed a contraction of lattice parameters with the introduction of B. The Debye-Waller factor determined from EXAFS fitting gradually increases as a function of boron addition and abruptly increases during the structural evolution from crystalline to amorphous. Upon the onset of this transition the static and microwave magnetic properties became exceptionally softer, with values of coercivity and ferromagnetic linewidth reducing dramatically. In the second part of this thesis, metastable alloys of the composition FeCuZr were synthesized by high energy ball milling and measured by EXAFS. The fitting results demonstrate that nanocrystalline or amorphous alloys have been obtained depending on the Zr content.