Phase precipitation behavior of melt-spun ternary Ce2Fe14B alloy during rapid quenching and heat treatment

To understand the structure, phase precipitation and magnetic properties of the ternary Ce-Fe-B alloy, the effects of wheel speed and heat treatment on the melt-spun Ce2Fe14B alloy have been investigated. For the wheel speeds varied from 10 to 50 m/s, hard magnetic Ce2Fe14B phase precipitates in as-spun ribbons prepared at 10 and 20 m/s. Increasing wheel speed leads to the appearance and increase of amorphous phase and reduced saturation magnetization. For the amorphous ribbons prepared at 50 m/s, when the annealing temperature increased from 500 °C to 600 °C and 700 °C, α-Fe phase precipitates first followed by the appearance of Ce2Fe14B phase and grain growth. Transmission electron microscope analysis revealed that large Ce2Fe14B grains and the uniformly distributed small α-Fe grains precipitates from amorphous matrix after heat treatment. The good magnetic properties with saturation magnetization of 11.7 kG, remanence of 5.7 kG, coercivity of Hc = 2.8 kOe, and maximum energy product of 2.9 MGOe have been obtained in the optimized sample.