The magnetic structures of some Fe100-xZrx metallic glasses

The spin-flip cross-sections of two samples each of Fe90Zr10 and Fe92Zr8 produced in two different laboratories were measured using the polarized neutron spectrometers IN20 and D7 at the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble. All the samples have non-zero spin-flip cross-sections, with peaks at Q similar to 3.1 Angstrom(-1), coinciding with the first maximum in the structure factor S(Q), on a diffuse Q-dependent 'background'. The features change little on cooling to 2 K and persist above the Curie temperature. The samples are therefore all non-collinear ferromagnets, with significant ferromagnetic correlations between the non-collinear components of the moments. The compositions of the samples were shown to be correct to less than or equal to0.1 at.% by magnetic susceptibility measurements. The 'background' was found to be significantly larger in the spin-flip cross-sections of one set of the samples. Careful examination of neutron diffraction data measured using the LAD diffractometer, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, showed that these samples had barely detectable impurities of alpha-Fe. The critical re-evaluation of previous data is therefore necessary as experimental results are evidently influenced by very low levels of crystalline impurities that are difficult to detect.