On samarium-cobalt magnets: SmCo5 magnets have a very high coercivity (coercive force); that is, they are not easily demagnetized. They are fabricated by packing wide-grain lone-domain magnetic powders. All of the motes are aligned with the easy axis direction. In this case, all of the domain walls are at 180 degrees. When there are no impurities, the reversal process of the bulk magnet is equivalent to lone-domain motes, where coherent rotation is the dominant mechanism. However, due to the imperfection of fabricating, impurities may be introduced in the magnets, which form nuclei. In this case, because the impurities may have lower anisotropy or misaligned easy axes, their directions of magnetization are easier to spin, which breaks the 180° domain wall configuration. In such materials, the coercivity is controlled by nucleation. To obtain much coercivity, impurity control is critical in the fabrication process.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 20:07:13 +0000