Impact of uniaxial stress on soft-magnetic and magneto-impedance properties of vitrified magnetostrictive microwires

The investigation addresses the impact of stress on soft magnetic and giant magneto-impedance (GMI) of rapidly quenched Fe77.5Si7.5B15, (Co94Fe6)72.5Si12.5B15 and (Co94Fe6)72.5Si12.5B12.5Nb0.5Cr2 microwires. Differential scanning calorimetry revealed interesting phase stability in the later alloys. The vitrified microwires contained dominant Co and a lean Fe content showed much superior soft magnetic properties and high magnetoimpedance. The alloy microwires incorporated with Nb and Cr manifested lowest coercivity value of 0.034 Oe with a high GMImax value of 425% in the as-quenched state. The uniaxial stress applied on the microwires modified the shape of the hysteresis loops and GMI plots. The hysteresis loops showed stress dependence of coercivity based on alloy chemistry, phase stability and consequent magnetostriction. The GMImax revealed sensitive change with respect to the applied stress in all the alloy microwires. In addition to GMImax interesting features were observed in the GMI profile pertaining influence of stress on the anisotropy field. The anisotropy field shifted systematically in one of the alloy microwires which displayed symmetric dual GMI peaks. The stress was also found to modify the asymmetric characteristics in a microwire.