Unexpected coercivity enhancement > 1 T for Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets with 20 wt.% Nd produced by laser powder bed fusion

Abstract

Current production of dense Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets is restricted to the powder metallurgical way consisting of powder production, pressing and magnet field alignment, sintering and post processing. This method allows the production of simple shaped magnets with superior magnetic performance. Bonded magnets show a higher geometrical flexibility on the expense of magnetic performance due the mixing with non-magnetic polymer with a volume content of up to 50%. Additive Manufacturing by means of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) offers the opportunity to overcome design restrictions of conventional production techniques and allows new strategies for the application-oriented product development. LPBF is characterized by a layer-by-layer local melting of powder on a built platform by a focused laser beam, which is scanned across the powder. New powder is applied on top of melted material afterwards and the melting process is continued. Local melting, rapid solidification, directional heat transfer and several re-melting and re-heating cycles control the microstructural development of metals during LPBF. For this reason, achievable microstructures and properties differ in general significantly from such ones, which can be obtained from conventional fabrication processes.We applied laser powder bed fusion to commercial Nd-lean MQPTM-S powder from Magnequench for the additive manufacturing of Nd-Fe-B bulk permanent magnets. Samples were manufactured on a “M2 cusing” machine from Concept Laser GmbH under protective Argon atmosphere and an Oxygen content below 0.2%. Nd-Fe-B behaves very different compared to established materials during LPBF and the resulting magnetic performance is mainly controlled by the energy input from the laser beam and depends on the processing parameter laser power PL, laser scan velocity vL and hatch distance hy. The latter one represents the offset of neighbouring laser scan lines [1].The impact of processing parameter laser power and scan velocity on coercivity is shown in Figure 1 (a). It is obvious, that Hc is enhanced, when laser power increases or scan velocity decreases – in other words, if the energy input raises. A similar behaviour was observed for remanence Br and maximum energy product (BH)max. However, the enhancement of magnetic performance is limited by a material specific maximum allowed limit of processibility, at which the samples will be increasingly destroyed. For optimized processing parameter a coercivity of 920 kA/m (1.16 T), a remanence of 0.63 T and a maximum energy product of 63 kJ/m3 is obtained. Thereby, Br and (BH)max represent the highest reported values for additively manufactured permanent magnets so far. The demagnetization branch of the hysteresis curve for a magnet with optimized magnetic properties is shown in Figure 1 (b) and compared to the initial MQPTM-S powder and a polymer bonded magnet from the powder, which is produced by injection molding with a loading factor of 60 vol.%. The coercivity of the powder is 700 kA/m and is slightly reduced by injection molding. However, LPBF leads to an unexpected enhancement of coercivity and the value of the powder is exceeded by 30% without the addition of any rare earth containing eutectics or other post processes.The composition of the used material exhibits 20 wt.% of rare earth, which is equivalent to 8 at.% and is in the range of α-Fe/Nd2Fe14B nanocomposites [2]. These are typically prepared by melt spinning and show coercivities of 400 – 600 kA/m for comparable compositions [2,3], e.g rare earth content between 8 and 9 at.%. These values are clearly exceeded by our LPBF-processed Nd-Fe-B magnets.The link between LPBF-processing and enhanced magnetic performance is the microstructure of the magnets and the microstructural development is controlled – as described above – by several factors. In the case of LPBF-processed Nd-Fe-B magnets we obtained a unique fine-grained microstructure with a grain size between 60 and 600 nm.Our results demonstrate, that improved magnetic performance can be achieved by LPBF of Nd-Fe-B bulk permanent magnets with an optimized coercivity, which is unexpected high for the given Nd-lean composition. This offers new perspectives for the development of new manufacturing processes for the production of improved Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets. **