A facile chemical synthesis of PrCo5 particles with high performance

Abstract

PrCo5 particles exhibit promising application potentials in fabricating high-performance permanent magnets and nanocomposite magnets. In view of this, we employ a bottom up strategy to fabricate highly anisotropic PrCo5 particles. The synthesis process of PrCo5 particles involved mainly two steps, (i) preparation of precursor that contains a mixture of amorphous Pr(OH)3 and crystalline Co(OH)2 (ii) Using a calciothermic-reduction, the precursor mixture has converted into PrCo5 particles, which are similar to the traditionally prepared SmCo5 particles. The obtained PrCo5 particles mostly single crystal with an average size from 200 nm to 800 nm. The strong magnetic anisotropy and excellent magnetic properties, especially a high degree of grain alignment and large remanance ratio (Mr/M100kOe) leads to a large maximum energy product at room temperature. Therefore, the coercivity of 8.56 kOe, Mr/M100kOe of 0.80 and the maximum energy product of 12.64MGOe were achieved in aligned PrCo5 particles. The results suggest a pathway for the development of nanocomposite magnets with an enhanced energy product.