Coercivity enhancements of Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets by diffusing DyHx along different axes

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Diffusing heavy rare earth elements along the grain boundaries (GBs) for Nd2Fe14B-type sintered magnets serves as an effective method to enhance coercivity and to minimize remanence loss simultaneously. Considering the texture anisotropy of Nd-rich GB phases, the coercivity incremental difference by diffusing DyHx fine powders along or perpendicular to the <0 0 1 > easy axis (c-axis) has been investigated. The coercivity increases more rapidly to 20.61 kOe (5.76 kOe higher than that of the as-sintered state) when diffusing along the c-axis than that diffusing perpendicular to c-axis (18.85 kOe, 4.00 kOe higher than the as-sintered state). Microstructural investigation reveals that Dy diffuses more easily towards the magnet inner part when treating along the c-axis than that for the perpendicular case due to the anisotropic distribution of the Nd-rich phase. This is verified by a higher Dy content at equivalent diffusing depth and a much deeper final diffusion distance. The local Dy-containing fractions with a stronger anisotropy field are richer for the magnet treated along the c-axis, leading to the much rapider coercivity enhancement. This work reveals that diffusion heavy rare earth along the c-axis is more effective to enhance coercivity for aligned Nd–Fe–B sintered magnets.