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With increasing demand for magnets in energy conversion systems, the quest for the development and understanding of novel processing routes to produce permanent magnets has become urgent. We report a novel mechanochemical process for the synthesis of Nd(Fe,Co)B magnetic particles with a high coercivity of 12.4 kOe. This process involves the reduction of neodymium oxide, iron oxide, cobalt oxide and boron anhydride in the presence of a calcium reducing agent and a CaO diluent. The formation mechanism of Nd(Fe,Co)B changed with increasing CaO content, and the average crystal size of the Nd(Fe,Co)B particles also increased, resulting in an increase in the coercivity values. The reaction mechanism during milling was revealed through a study of the phase transformations as a function of milling time. It was found that unlike self-propagating reactions, this reduction reaction during milling requires continuous input of mechanical energy to reach a steady state.

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We report an environmentally benign and cost‐effective method to produce Fe and Co magnetic metal nanoparticles as well as the Fe/Cao and Co/CaO nanocomposites by using a novel, dry mechanochemical process. Mechanochemical milling of metal oxides with a suitable reducing agent resulted in the production of magnetic metal nanoparticles. The process involved grinding and consequent reduction of low‐costing oxide powders, unlike conventional processing techniques involving metal salts or metal complexes. Calcium granules were used as the reducing agent. Magnetometry measurements were performed over a large range of temperatures, from 10 to 1273 K, to evaluate the Curie temperature, blocking temperature, irreversibility temperature, saturation magnetization, and coercivity. The saturation magnetizations of the iron and cobalt nanoparticles were found to be 191 and 102 emu g−1, respectively. The heating abilities of these nanoparticles suspended in several liquids under alternating magnetic fields were measured and the specific loss power was determined. Our results suggest that the dry mechanochemical process is a robust method to produce metallic nanoparticles and nanocomposites.

The excellent hard magnetic properties of NdFeB based magnets have an enormous range of technological applications. Exchange-coupled NdFeB/α-Fe magnets were chemically synthesized by a microwave assisted combustion process to produce mixed oxides, followed by a reduction diffusion process to form magnetic nano-composite powder. This synthesis technique offers an inexpensive and facile platform to produce exchange coupled hard magnets. The size dependent magnetic properties were investigated. The formation mechanisms of the oxide powders and the reduction diffusion mechanism were identified. The microwave power was found to play a crucial role in determining the crystallite size. The coercivity of the powder increased with increasing particle size. Room temperature coercivity (H) values greater than 9 kOe and magnetization of 110 emu g was obtained in particles with a mean size of ∼62 nm. An energy product of 5.2 MGOe was obtained, which is the highest reported value for chemically synthesized hard magnetic NdFeB/α-Fe powders.

Magnetic, nano-crystalline samples of zinc substituted nickel ferrite, (Zn x Ni 1-x Fe 2 O 4 for x = 0.0-0.9 in step of 0.2), are synthesized using microwave combustion synthesis technique. The structural properties of Ni-Zn are determined using X-ray powder diffraction, transmission electron microscopy; Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy and neutron diffraction techniques. Average crystalline size obtained from X-ray diffraction and neutron diffraction is in the range of 30-60 nm. The cation distribution obtained from X-ray diffraction and neutron diffraction show that Zn occupies only tetrahedral A-site in the spinel lattice. The values of magnetic moment derived from magnetization measurements and neutron diffraction agrees nearly 97 % to that of bulk at 300 K. This methodology can be used to prepare large quantities (about 10 g) of sample at one time using kitchen microwave oven working at 1,200 W power.

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