Permanent magnets, and particularly rare earth magnets such as Nd-Fe-B, have attracted much attention because of their magnetic properties. There are two well-established techniques for obtaining sintered magnets and bonded Nd-Fe-B magnets. Powder metallurgy is used to obtain high-performance anisotropic sintered magnets. To produce bonded magnets, either melt-spinning or the hydrogenation, disproportionation, desorption, and recombination process is used to produce magnet powders, which are then mixed with binders. Since the development of Nd-Fe-B magnets, several kinds of intermetallic compounds have been reported, such as Sm2Fe17Nx and Sm(Fe,M)12 (M: Ti, V, etc.). However, it is difficult to apply a liquid-phase sintering process similar to the one used for Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets in order to produce high-performance Sm-Fe-based sintered magnets because of the low decomposition temperature of the compound and the lack of a liquid grain boundary phase like that in the Nd-Fe-B system. Therefore, bonded magnets are useful in the production of bulk magnets using these Sm-Fe-based compounds. This article reviews recent progress in our work on the development of high-performance bonded magnets using Nd2Fe14B and Sm2Fe17Nx compounds.
Keywords: 203 Magnetics / Spintronics / Superconductors; 40 Optical, magnetic and electronic device materials; Hydrogenation disproportionation desorption recombination (HDDR); anisotropy; coercivity; nanoparticle; oxygen.
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by National Institute for Materials Science in partnership with Taylor & Francis Group.