Local structure studies of Fe-Nb-B metallic glasses using electron diffraction.

Local atomic structures in Fe(84)Nb(7)B(9) and Fe(70)Nb(10)B(20) amorphous alloys were examined by means of electron diffraction with the help of computer calculation. Electron diffraction patterns were taken by using energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to eliminate inelastic scattering. We constructed structure models with 5000 atoms fitting to experimental interference functions. Voronoi polyhedral analyses were performed for the obtained final structure models. Local atomic structures of the alloys were closely related to those of the crystalline phases that appeared on annealing. A difference of stability of two amorphous phases was discussed on the basis of structure models.