Amorphisation of Fe-based alloy via wet mechanical alloying assisted by PCA decomposition

Amorphisation of Fe75Si20B5 (at.%) alloy has been attempted both by wet and dry mechanical alloying starting from a mixture of elemental powders. Powder amorphisation was not achieved even after 140 hours of dry mechanical alloying. Using the same milling parameters, when wet mechanical alloying was used, the powder amorphisation was achieved after 40 h of milling. Our assumption regarding the powder amorphisation capability enhancement by contamination with carbon was proved by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) measurements which revealed the presence of carbon in the chemical composition of the wet mechanically alloyed sample. Using shorter milling times and several process control agents (PCA) (ethanol, oleic acid and benzene) with different carbon content it was proved that the milling duration required for powder amorphisation is linked to the carbon content of the PCA. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), thermomagnetic (TG) and X-ray Diffraction (XRD) measurements performed to the heated samples revealed the fact that, the crystallisation occurs at 488 °C, thus leading to the formation of Fe3Si and Fe2B. Thermogravimetry measurements performed under H2 atmosphere, showed the same amount of contamination with C, which is about 2.3 wt%, for the amorphous samples regardless of the type of PCA. Saturation magnetisation of the wet milled samples decreases upon increasing milling time. In the case of the amorphous samples wet milled with benzene up to 20 h and with oleic acid up to 30 h, the saturation magnetisation has roughly the same value, indicating the same degree of contamination. The XRD performed on the samples milled using the same parameters, revealed that powder amorphisation can be achieved even via dry milling, just by adding the equivalent amount of elemental C calculated from the TG plots. This proves that in this system by considering the atomic species which can contaminate the powder, they can be used as microalloying elements which could provide the required extra amount of metalloids.