Magnetic properties of partially devitrified metallic glasses

Summary form only given. The authors present a review of some selected experiments which have been carried out using partially devitrified Fe- and Co-based metallic glasses. They can be classified as the granular solids where both constituent phases show strongly magnetic behavior at sufficiently low temperatures. By an appropriate choice of the composition of the starting metallic glass it is possible to produce nanocrystalline samples displaying a matrix Curie temperature much lower than room temperature. In this case, manipulating the size and volume fraction of crystallites by partial devitrification of the parent material, it is possible to tailor samples in which a variety of magnetic phases and a multitude of magnetic phenomena can occur. It is shown that appropriate annealing of the parent glass provides the samples which display, among the other magnetic phases, superparamagnetic behavior in particular.