PREPARATION, STRUCTURE AND PHYSICAL-PROPERTIES OF FE-RICH, CO-RICH AND NI-RICH MELT-QUENCHED RIBBONS CONTAINING ZR OR HF .1. PREPARATION DETAILS AND STRUCTURAL CHARACTERIZATION

A melt-spinning technique was used to produce TE-TL alloy ribbons with TE = Zr and Hf and TL = Fe,Co or Ni for compositions around the TL-ri ch eutectic (about 90 at.% TL-content). A detailed description of the preparation conditions for obtaining homogeneous, continuous, long (in some cases in excess of 10 m) ribbons about 3 mm wide and 10 to 20 mu m thick is given. All the ribbons were obtained in an amorphous state as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) investigations except (a) the Zr9Ni91 alloy forming a bcc-Ni(Zr) solid solution phase at low quench rate and (b) the Hf-11 Ni-89 alloy forming a HfNi5 phas e with nanocrystalline grain structure even at the highest quench rate applied. For the Zr-Fe and Zr-Co glasses, a fluctuation of the neares t-neighbor distances from site to site was observed by TEM that could be ascribed to a fluctuation of the chemical short-range order.