Hyperfine Interact (2009) 189:119–123 DOI 10.1007/s10751-009-9936-5 Mössbauer study of rapidly solidified Al-Fe based amorphous alloys E. Fazakas · S. N. Kane · K. Lazar · L. K. Varga Published online: 25 March 2009 © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Mössbauer spetroscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to study the structure of rapidly quenched Al 88 Fe 5 Y 7 , Al 88 Fe 4 Y 7 Sb 1 and Al 93 Fe 5 Sb 2 alloys. Sb addition diminishes the glass forming ability and results in precipitation of the stable AlSb compound. The X-ray amorphous Al 88 Fe 5 Y 7 alloy shows a short range order resembling to the Al 6 Fe compound as it can be judged from the Mössbauer data. Keywords Al-Fe based alloys · XRD · Mössbauer spectroscopy 1 Introduction Amorphous Al-based alloys are interesting due to their excellent mechanical proper- ties, e.g. tensile strength of the amorphous alloys is twice the highest values measured for commercial crystalline Al-based alloys [1]. Their glass forming ability (GFA) however is poor, no real (thicker than >1 mm) bulk Al-based metallic glass could be obtained so far. Mechanisms for metallic glass formation and prediction of new glass compositions are ongoing areas of intensive research. Beside the negative heat of mixing of the constituent elements the confusion principle is the leading idea in looking for new glass forming compositions. The confusion during rapid solidification E. Fazakas · L. K. Varga (B ) RISSPO, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 49, 1525 Budapest, Hungary e-mail: varga@szfki.hu S. N. Kane Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 790 784, South Korea S. N. Kane School of Physics, D. A. University, Khandwa road Campus, Indore 452017, India K. Lazar Institute of Isotopes, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P. O. Box 49, 1525 Budapest, Hungary