SmCo 5 permanent magnets exhibit enormous uniaxial magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy and have a high Curie temperature. However, a low energy product presents a significant drawback in the performance of SmCo 5 permanent magnets. In order to increase the energy product in SmCo 5 , we propose substituting fixed amount of cobalt with iron in a new magnet, SmFe 3 CoNi, where inclusion of nickel metal makes this magnet thermodynamically stable. We further discuss some basic theoretical magnetic properties of the SmCo 5 compound.
IntroductionThree basic material parameters determine the intrinsic properties of hard magnetic materials: (i) spontaneous (saturation) magnetization, M s , (ii) Curie temperature, T c , and (iii) magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy (MAE), K 1 [1]. These three parameters all need to be large for the permanent magnet to be technologically suitable: T c ~ ≥ 550 K, M s ~ ≥ 1 MA/m, K 1 ~ ≥ 4 MJ/m 3 . The desired values of these properties can be achieved by combining transition-metal (TM) with rare-earth-metal (RE) atoms in various intermetallic compounds, where the RE atoms induce a large magnetic anisotropy while the TM atoms provide a large magnetization and high Curie temperature [1,2].SmCo 5 (in the hexagonal CaCu 5 -type structure) magnets exhibit enormous uniaxial MAE of K 1 ~ 17.2 MJ/m 3 , substantially higher than that of Nd 2 Fe 14 B (Neomax) magnets (K 1 ~ 4.9 MJ/m 3 ), and have almost twice the Curie temperature (T c ~ 1020 K) compared to Neomax (T c ~ 588 K) [3,4]. However, Nd 2 Fe 14 B currently dominates the world market for permanent magnets (~ 62 %) [5,6], since it possesses the highest energy performance measured by a record energy product (BH) max of 512 kJ/m 3 , more than twice as high as the energy product of SmCo 5 magnets, (BH) max of 231 kJ/m 3 [3,4]. Although SmCo 5 magnets are more suitable for high temperature applications than Neomax, due to their relatively low energy performance SmCo 5 magnets occupy only ~ 3% of the world market [5,6].From a cost stand point, it would be beneficial to substitute Co atoms with Fe, because Fe in the Earth's crust is ~ 2000 times more abundant than Co and consequently much cheaper. In addition, Fe is a ferromagnetic metal with a very large magnetization at room temperature (1.76 MA/m [3]). However, the SmFe 5 compound is thermodynamically unstable and does not appear in the equilibrium Sm-Fe phase diagram, although the alloy compound Sm(Co 1-x Fe x ) 5 with the CaCu 5 -type structure has been synthesized by the melt-spinning method for x = 0.0 -0.3 [7]. Furthermore, the Curie temperature for Sm(Co 1-x Fe x ) 5 alloys was found to increase from ~ 1020 K to ~ 1080 K when increasing x from 0.0 to 0.2 [8], in contrast to Sm 2 (Co 1-x Fe x ) 17 alloys which exhibit a monotonic decrease in Curie temperature with increasing Fe content [9].The fundamental purpose of the present study is to explore the effect of adding Ni to the SmCo 5 magnet in order to stabilize Sm(Co 1-x Fe x ) 5 alloys containing a sufficient amount of iron to boost the...