Thermodynamic properties of R2Fe14B (R=Dy, Nd) and dysprosium random substitution effect on coercivity in neodymium permanent magnets

Abstract

Neodymium (Nd) magnets (Nd2Fe14B) are key materials for achieving high energy conversion efficiency. The coercive forces (fields) of the magnets are often reinforced by adding dysprosium (Dy), especially at high temperatures. To understand the magnetic properties of Dy-substituted systems (Nd1−xDyx)2Fe14B, it is important to study those of Dy2Fe14B and Nd2Fe14B and analyze the difference in detail from a microscopic viewpoint. Applying a recently developed atomistic model approach, we investigated thermodynamic properties of these magnets. We studied the temperature and field dependences of the magnetizations, and anisotropy fields and energies. We found that the simulation results captured the characteristic features of the experimentally observed data. We discuss the detail with the magnetization profiles of the component atoms. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of Dy random substitution on the coercivity in two systems: one in contact with vacuum and the other in contact with a grain boundary phase. We found that the threshold fields increased almost linearly with the concentration of Dy atoms in both systems, which was compared to the results of the layer-by-layer substitution effect analyzed in our previous work. We discuss the influence of the arrangement of Dy atoms on coercivity enhancement.