Effects of Heavy-Ions on Soft-Magnetic Metallic Glasses Studied by Diffraction of Synchrotron Radiation

In this work, influence of ²³⁸U swift (5.9 MeV/u) heavy ions on the as-prepared Fe-Cu-Nb-Si-B metallic glass was investigated by in situ temperature X-ray diffraction of synchrotron radiation. It was observed that ion irradiation strongly affected the temperature evolution of the parameters of the first diffuse peak. It is hypothesized that ion irradiation induced structural rearrangement that increased the degree of disorder of the amorphous structure. During heat treatment, structural relaxation and annealing out of this ion-induced degradation took place. Consequently, the original structure was recovered as demonstrated by the behaviour of the first diffuse peak broadening and devitrification process.