Magnetic properties of iron-based soft magnetic composites with SiO2 coating obtained by reverse microemulsion method

In this work, iron-based soft magnetic composites coated with the amorphous SiO2 layer have been fabricated by utilizing tetraethoxysilane in the reverse microemulsion method, and then the effects of addition amount of SiO2 and annealing temperature on the magnetic properties were investigated. The results show that the surface of iron powders contains a thin amorphous SiO2 insulation layer, which effectively decreases the magnetic loss of synthesized magnets. The magnetic loss of coated samples decreased by 87.8% as compared with that of uncoated samples at 150 kHz. Magnetic measurements show that the sample with 1.25 wt% SiO2 has an acceptable real part and minimum imaginary part of permeability in comparison with other samples. Also, the annealing treatment increased the initial permeability, the maximum permeability and the magnetic induction and decreased the coercivity with increasing temperature in the range 300-600 °C. The results of the loss separation imply that the annealed SMCs have a higher hysteresis loss coefficient (k2) and lower eddy current loss coefficient (k3) as compared with the pure iron compacts after the same heat treatment due to the preservation of the SiO2 layer.