The origin of hard magnetic properties in rapidly quenched Nd4Fe77.5B18.5 alloy

Abstract

Until now, the origin of hard magnetic properties of rapidly quenched Nd-Fe-B alloys with lower Nd concentration is not clear. In this paper, the phase compositions of rapidly quenched Nd4Fe77.5B18.5 alloys annealed under different conditions have been studied by using zero-field spin-echo nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Mössbauer effect (ME) techniques. It is found that there exists a certain amount of Nd2Fe14B phase in the samples annealed at 960 °C and ingot alloy, which have poor hard magnetic properties; while, the sample annealed under optimal condition consists only of bct-Fe3B as the main phase and a small amount of a-Fe. However, the ME result indicates that about 5 at. % Fe atoms in FeIII (8 g) site of bct-Fe3B have been replaced by Nd atoms; the NMR result demonstrates that 11B NMR spectrum is the characteristic peak of bct-Fe3B, but it broadens asymmetrically to the high frequency side, which is due to the bct-Fe3B influenced by Nd atoms. The amplitude of radio frequency (rf) excitation field required to get the maximum 11B spin-echo signal from bct-Fe3B in the sample annealed at 839 °C is only about one third as much as that required to excite the 11B in the bct-Fe3B influenced by Nd atoms in the sample annealed at 670 °C for a short time, which implies the latter has a larger coercivity field than the former. It is concluded that the origin of hard magnetic properties of Nd4Fe77.5B18.5 alloy is not related to the 2:14:1 phase, but to the change of bct-Fe3B itself.