Magnetically dilute metallic glasses. I. 3d moments

Magnetic-susceptibility and high-field magnetization measurements are presented for amorphous Zr40Cu50M10 (M denoting Fe, Mn) and Nb50Ni50-xFex, with x ranging from zero to about ten. Curie-Weiss fits to the susceptibility data were made to determine effective moments peff and paramagnetic Weiss temperatures,. The small values of peff suggest the presence of moment instabilities depending on local environment, and the negative values suggest antiferromagnetic local-moment-conduction-electron interactions. The Fe alloys develop hysteresis at low temperatures indicating the presence of a magnetically ordered state. These alloys can be characterized as cluster glasses because of the apparent importance of magnetic clusters and the development of an ordered state of spin-glass character. However, the Mn alloys show no evidence of magnetic order down to 1.3 K.