Effect of adding non-ferromagnetic nanoparticles to grain boundary on coercivity of sintered Nd-Fe-B magnet

In this work, we investigated the influence of additional compounds of Nd-Cu-Al, Dy-Nb-Al, Dy-Zr-Al and Nb-Cu-Al on coercivity of sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets. The additional nanoparticles with size in the range of 40-80 nm was mixed with the micrometer Nd-Fe-B powder before sintering process. The results show that the coercivity of the sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets can be improved by introducing additional nanoparticles to their grain boundaries. The improvement of the coercivity of the magnets is clearly dependent on composition and fraction of the additional compounds. While the Dy-Nb-Al, Dy-Zr-Al and Nb-Cu-Al compounds degrade the coercivity of the sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets, the Nd-Cu-Al nanoparticles considerably improve this quantity. The coercivity the sintered Nd16.5Fe77B6.5 magnets has been enhanced about 40% by adding 3 wt% of the Dy-free compound of Nd40Cu30Al30.