Axial hysteresis loops of glass-coated amorphous Fe70B15Si10C5 microwi
re have been measured as a function of both the diameter of metallic n
ucleus (from 3.7-14.9 mu m) and the thickness of the coating (4.0-9.6
mu m). They exhibit low-field rectangular hysteresis loops with a sing
le and large Barkhausen jump even for samples as short as 5 mm long. C
oercivity remarkably increases (roughly from 1 to 10 Oe) and remanence
decreases (from 1 to 0.45 T), respectively, as the ratio of metallic
nucleus radius to the total radius of the wire decreases from 0.63 to
0.16. The strength of the internal stresses induced during the fabrica
tion depends on this ratio, and the easy axes of the corresponding mag
netoelastic anisotropies determine the actual value of coercivity and
remanence for these microwires.