Effect of rapid solidification on giant magnetostriction in ferromagnetic shape memory iron-based alloys

Ferromagnetic shape memory Fe-29.6 at.% Pd alloy ribbons prepared by the rapid solidification, melt-spinning method, showed a giant magnetostriction of 830 microstrain when an external magnetic field of 7 kOe was applied nearly normal to the ribbon surface at room temperature. This ribbon's magnetostriction was several times as large as conventional polycrystalline bulk's one before rapid solidification. The magnetostriction in the rolling direction depended strongly on a direction of applied magnetic field. We considered that this phenomenon is caused by a rearrangement of activated martensite twin variants just below the austenite phase transformation temperature. We investigated their basic material properties, i.e. the dependencies of magnetostriction on temperature as well as on magnetic angular orientation to the surface, magnetic properties, crystal structure, surface texture morphology and shape memory effect of Fe-29.6 at.% Pd ribbon samples by comparing with conventional bulk sample. It can be concluded that the remarkable anisotropy of giant magnetostriction of ribbon sample is caused by the unique uniaxial-oriented fine grain structure formed by the melt-spinning method. In addition, we confirmed the possibility of rapidly solidified Fe Pt ribbon as a new kind of iron-based ferromagnetic shape memory alloys for magnetostrictive material. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.