Nanostructuring of magnetically hard and soft materials is fascinating for exploring next-generation ultrastrong permanent magnets with less expensive rare-earth elements. However, the resulting hard/soft nanocomposites often exhibit random crystallographic orientations and monomorphological equiaxed grains, leading to inferior magnetic performances compared to corresponding pure rare-earth magnets. This study describes the first fabrication of a novel bimorphological anisotropic bulk nanocomposite using a multistep deformation approach, which consists of oriented hard-phase SmCo rod-shaped grains and soft-phase Fe(Co) equiaxed grains with a high fraction (≈28 wt%) and small size (≈10 nm). The nanocomposite exhibits a record-high energy product (28 MGOe) for this class of bulk materials with less rare-earth elements and outperforms, for the first time, the corresponding pure rare-earth magnet with 58% enhancement in energy product. These findings open up the door to moving from a pure permanent-magnet system to a stronger nanocomposite system at lower costs.

MnBi 2 Te 4 is an antiferromagnetic topological insulator that has stimulated intense interest due to its exotic quantum phenomena and promising device applications. The surface structure is a determinant factor to understand the magnetic and topological behavior of MnBi 2 Te 4 , yet its precise atomic structure remains elusive. Here we discovered a surface collapse and reconstruction of few-layer MnBi 2 Te 4 exfoliated under delicate protection. Instead of the ideal septuple-layer structure in the bulk, the collapsed surface is shown to reconstruct as a Mn-doped Bi 2 Te 3 quintuple layer and a Mn x Bi y Te double layer with a clear van der Waals gap in between. Combined with first-principles calculations, such surface collapse is attributed to the abundant intrinsic Mn−Bi antisite defects and the tellurium vacancy in the exfoliated surface, which is further supported by in situ annealing and electron irradiation experiments. Our results shed light on the understanding of the intricate surface-bulk correspondence of MnBi 2 Te 4 and provide an insightful perspective on the surface-related quantum measurements in MnBi 2 Te 4 few-layer devices.

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In general, there is a trade-off between magnetization and coercivity in nanocomposite magnets. Here, we demonstrate a simultaneous enhancement of both the magnetization and coercivity in bulk α-Fe/Nd2Fe14B nanocomposite magnets prepared via a severe plastic deformation (SPD) compared with thermally annealed magnets. The enhanced magnetization results from a high fraction (>30%) of α-Fe phase induced by SPD, while the increase in coercivity from 4.6 to 7.2 kOe is attributed to an enhancement in domain wall pinning strength. This study shows an increase in energy product is possible in the nanocomposite magnets for a large inclusion of soft-magnetic phase.