Abstract
To satisfy thermodynamic and kinetic requirements, Fe-based alloys capable of forming bulk metallic glasses often contain five or more elements. Usually, such compositions are of the type transition-metals/metalloids, with metalloid content around 20 atomic%. Starting from known Fe-based compositions used to make melt-spun glassy ribbons, purifying the master alloy by fluxing with B
2
O
3
and using copper mould casting, a ternary Fe
66
Nb
4
B
30
bulk metallic glass was obtained. To our knowledge this is the first Fe-based fully amorphous bulk metallic glass with just three atomic constituents. The alloy is ferromagnetic with Curie temperature T
c
= 646 K, glass transition temperature T
g
= 845 K, crystallization temperature T
x
= 876 K, liquidus temperature T
liq
= 1451 K and having a mechanical strength of 4 GPa.