Structural and magnetic properties of ultrafine Fe‐Pd particles

The structural and magnetic properties of evaporated ultrafine Fe‐Pd particles have been studied near the equiatomic composition. Particles with an average size in the range of 65–360 A were obtained with the argon pressure varied between 0.5–40 Torr. All of the as‐made particles had a face centered cubic (fcc) structure and they were magnetically soft. A fcc to face centered tetragonal (fct) phase transformation was observed after annealing the powders at 500 °C resulting in room‐temperature coercivities up to 3.6 kOe and a magnetization (at 55 kOe) around 95 emu/g. An enhanced magnetic moment of about 3.0μB per atom was found for Fe.