Driving Amorphous Alloys across the Energy Landscape

Soft magnetic amorphous alloys are essential for energy-efficient electromagnetic technologies, especially in emerging green applications such as new-energy vehicles. Their performance, however, is often limited by quenched-in structural heterogeneity and internal stress, which hinder magnetic domain-wall motion and increase energy loss. In this work, pulse current training (PCT) is introduced as a new strategy to regulate the amorphous structure through discrete electrical pulses. PCT injects energy in a pulsed manner, enabling the alloy to cross local energy barriers on a complex three-dimensional energy landscape and evolve toward lower-energy, more magnetically favorable configurations. This process steers microstructures, reduces pinning, and markedly improves magnetic softness while preserving the amorphous state. On the cover, the electric vehicles symbolize green mobility and energy-saving technologies, while the undulating energy landscape illustrates how pulsed current steers the amorphous structure toward an optimized state for advanced performance. (http://doi.org/10.1002/rar2.70412)