Evidence of large magnetostructural effects in austenitic stainless steels.

The surprisingly low magnetic transition temperatures in austenitic stainless steels indicate that in these Fe-based alloys magnetic disorder might be present at room temperature. Using a first-principles approach, we have obtained a theoretical description of the stacking fault energy in Fe(100-c-n)Cr(c)Ni(n) alloys as a function of composition and temperature. Comparison of our results with experimental databases provides a strong evidence for large magnetic fluctuations in these materials. We demonstrate that the effects of alloying additions on the structural properties of steels contain a dominant magnetic contribution, which stabilizes the most common austenitic steels at normal service conditions.