Nonuniqueness of the state of amorphous pure iron

Amorphous pure Fe has been studied with ${}_{}{}^{57}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Fe}$ Mössbauer spectroscopy by utilizing various Fe-based binary amorphous-alloy systems that have stable amorphous phases up to very high Fe concentrations and then extrapolating the properties toward those of amorphous pure Fe. The concentration dependence of the magnetic properties and the hyperfine interaction parameters of Fe–early transition metal (Ti, Zr, Hf, Nb, Ta, and Mo) and Fe-metalloid (B, Sb, Si, Ge) systems reveals different states of amorphous Fe which can be related to the theoretically proposed ${\gamma }_1$ and ${\gamma }_2$ states of fcc Fe.