Acta Metallurgica Sinica (English Letters) ›› 2025, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (4): 587-596.DOI: 10.1007/s40195-025-01827-z

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Improved Coercivity in Cu-Doped SmCo5 Nanocomposite Powders Obtained by Low Temperature Annealing

Longfei Ma, Yingzhengsheng Huang, Wei Quan, Qiang Zheng(), Juan Du()   

  1. Institute of Materials, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200072, China
  • Received:2024-11-06 Revised:2024-12-20 Accepted:2024-12-24 Online:2025-04-10 Published:2025-02-21
  • Contact: Qiang Zheng, qiangzheng616@hotmail.com;Juan Du, jdu-case@hotmail.com

Abstract:

In this work, nanocrystalline SmCo5-Cu nanocomposite powders were fabricated from the ball-milled amorphous matrix by crystallization annealing which is lower than the traditional sintering temperature ~ 1000 °C for bulk SmCo5 bulk magnets. Annealed Cu-doped SmCo5 powders have a higher coercivity compared to that of Cu-free SmCo5 one due to the combined effects of refinement effect of grain size and the pinning effect induced by Cu doping. The peak of coercivity (Hc) is located at 600 °C for annealed Cu-doped SmCo5, which is ascribed to the improved pinning field. The pinning effect became reduced when the annealing was done at even higher temperatures. More importantly, the best comprehensive magnetic properties, including a maximum magnetic energy product (BH)max of 12.2 MGOe together with a coercivity of 31.8 kOe and a remanence of 64.3 emu/g, could be achieved for SmCo5-3 wt% Cu by low temperature annealing. These results demonstrate that isotropic Cu-doped SmCo5 nanocrystalline powders are promising precursors for the fabrication of high-performance bulk magnets.

Key words: Rare earth permanent magnet, SmCo5, Nanocrystalline, Refinement, Pinning mechanism, Crystallization