Microstructure evolution and coercivity mechanism of hydrogenation-disproportionation-desorption-recombination (HDDR) treated Nd-Fe-B strip cast alloys

Abstract

In this paper, we systematically investigated the microstructure evolution and coercivity mechanism of hydrogenation-disproportionation-desorption-recombination (HDDR) treated Nd-Fe-B strip cast alloys by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and three-dimensional atom probe (3DAP) analyses. The rod-like NdH2+x phases with diameters of 10–20 nm are embedded into α-Fe matrix, which hereditarily leads to textured grains in HDDR alloy. The migration of NdH2+x from Nd-rich region to α-Fe matrix during hydrogen absorption process contributes to the uniform redistribution of Nd-rich phases after HDDR treatment. The HDDR alloy with single domain grain sizes of 200–300 nm exhibits relatively low coercivity of 1.01 T that arises from pinning magnetic domain motion. The weak c-axis orientation of HDDR alloy results in a lower reverse magnetic field (coercivity) to reduce remanence to 0. Moreover, the direct contact of Nd2Fe14B grains and the high concentration of ferromagnetic elements (Fe content ≈ 66.06 at%, Co content ≈ 0.91 at%) in Nd-rich grain boundary layer lead to strong magnetostatic coupling effect among Nd2Fe14B grains. The nano-sized α-Fe inside Nd2Fe14B matrix makes the magnetization reversal easily and decreases the coercivity of HDDR alloy.