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Cross-posted on MMSE.

It makes sense to me intuitively that the crystalline structure in, say, grain-oriented electrical steel would yield good magnetic properties. I am envisioning magnetic field lines guided along by regularly arranged atoms in the grain-oriented steel.

I've learned, however, that amorphous steel can also have good magnetic properties. How is this possible when all the atoms are randomly arranged? Aren't the magnetic field lines going to be all haywire?

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  • $\begingroup$ Cross-posted on MMSE: mattermodeling.stackexchange.com/q/10398/5 $\endgroup$
    – user1271772
    Feb 10 at 22:56
  • $\begingroup$ Well, one thing is that an amorphous solid doesn't have dislocations or grain boundaries or grains that might like different magnetic fields in different ways. $\endgroup$
    – Jon Custer
    Feb 11 at 1:21

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Amorphous means positions of atoms are random. But this still allows for aligned magnetic moments. Then for magnetization it does not matter where the atoms are, only that their moments are aligned.

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For most magnetically ordered materials, their magnetic exchange strength leads to domain wall width between a few nm and a few um. That is the length over which the magnetization vector changes in these materials.

It is not related to atomic positions. Strucutral grain boundary thicknesses (in crystalline matter) are usually only a few (or even a single) atoms wide.

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