Amorphous alloys are new metallic materials that combine the properties of glass, metal, solid and liquid substances. The structure of amorphous alloys is characterized by long-range disorder, short-range order, macroscopic homogeneity and isotropy, and short-range inhomogeneity. Currently common methods for determining the amorphous structure such as X-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction, electron microscopy, etc. are used. Amorphous alloys form a wide range of compositions, and different structural configurations exist for amorphous substances of the same composition.
Amorphous alloys have high magnetic saturation strength, high permeability, low coercivity, low saturation magnetostriction, and extremely easy to complete the magnetization and demagnetization process, and many of their soft magnetic properties are much better than traditional silicon steel sheet materials and crystalline magnetic materials. Ferrous, nickel and cobalt based amorphous alloy soft magnetic strips, filaments and powders have been widely used in various transformers, inductors and sensors, magnetic shielding materials, radio frequency identifiers, etc.
The unique disordered structure and surface intrinsic inhomogeneity of amorphous alloys have created a wealth of highly active sites; compared to crystalline materials with a single active site, amorphous alloys have unique intrinsic catalytic activity, strong activation ability and dense active centers, which can be used as catalytic materials in the petroleum industry, environmental protection and other fields.
Amorphous alloys can be used as basic materials for manufacturing industry. Flexible gears based on amorphous alloys are tens of times more flexible than conventional metals and have many advantages such as simple structure, large transmission ratio, small size and long life, which are mostly used in robot arm connection and precision test field.
Amorphous alloys have high strength (more than 5GPa for cobalt base), high toughness, high elastic deformation, self-sharpening characteristics, irradiation resistance, corrosion resistance, etc. They are also one of the important materials for military industry.
The defects arising from the preparation process of amorphous strips lead to their poor resistance to sudden short circuits, as well as the high noise and brittleness caused by amorphous magnetostriction, researchers are working on it.
