Temperature dependence of the magnetic behaviour of complex concentrated alloys using SANS

With the ever-important aim to reduce environmental impact and consumption of strategic elements, new material discovery drives the development of new energy-efficient technologies based on economic and abundant resources. Complex concentrated alloys (CCA) containing multiple, nearly equimolar elements (often the cheaper ones) are currently receiving great attention in innovative alloy design.
Recent studies show that the addition of Al in CoFeNi0.5Cr0.5Alx (x: 0-1.5) CCA leads to a large change in magnetization, due to the Al providing a driving force for segregation, resulting in spherical FeCr rich nanoparticles observed for x=1.0 & 1.5 in an AlCoNi-rich matrix. In temperature-dependent magnetisation data, we observe that all samples have two transitions, the first associated with the AlCoNi-rich phase and the second with the FeCr-rich phase, which has a shoulder at a higher temperature than the main peak hinting at the presence of a third magnetic phase. Our previous ZOOM measurements at 300 K, showed that the nanoparticles have a two phase structure with a high magnetic core region surrounded by a shell with a different chemical composition (presumably Al rich) that is less magnetic than core and average matrix. Thus we would like to study the x =1.0 & 1.5 alloys as a function of temperature, to confirm that these two temperatures are indeed related to the two phase structure and how the magnetic structure of the two components are affected by the transition.