AIMD study and experimental verification of Ge-doped Fe80P13C7 amorphous soft magnetic alloys

Fe80P13-xC7Gex (x = 0, 2, 4) amorphous alloys were synthesized by rapid solidification technique and studied using Ab-initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) and first -principles calculations based on density -functional theory (DFT) for their electronic structures. Brillouin function was used to calculate saturation magnetization (mu 0MS) at elevated temperatures utilizing experimentally measured Curie temperature (TC) and mu 0MS at 0 K calculated by DFT. To verify the calculated mu 0MS, ingots of Fe80P13-xC7Gex (x = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) alloy were prepared by meltspinning. An increase in experimental mu 0MS with Ge concentration agrees with the calculated mu 0MS. TC also increases with Ge concentration. Partial substitution of Ge for P enhances the mu 0MS to 1.63 T (x = 4) from 1.46 T (x = 0), which indicated that the Fe80P13-xC7Gex (x = 4) shows optimum soft magnetic properties.