INEEL Researchers Create Mighty Magnets With Minuscule Structure

Materials scientist Dan Branagan found that tweaking the standard formula for these high-end magnets produces stronger magnets that can withstand high manufacturing temperatures. Branagan, of the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, worked in collaboration with researchers from Ames Laboratory in Iowa and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

High heat usually transforms rare earth magnets into worthless hunks of metal. But Branagan and his colleagues found that adding extra elements to the mix improves the temperature resistance and magnetic field strength. Surprisingly, the extra elements improve the magnet by forming non-metallic compounds. The researchers also added an unusual and important step - creating a metallic glass.

"The improved manufacturing ability and increase in magnetic strength is a great improvement," says Branagan. He and his colleagues describe their discovery in the cover story of the July 15, 2000 issue of the Journal of Materials Science.

Known as rare earth magnets (from their mix of rare earth elements), the formula developed by Branagan and his colleagues includes the standard rare earth mix of neodymium, iron, and boron, with titanium and carbon as extras (among others). Magnets like those developed at the INEEL have household uses, such as in cordless power tools and miniature speakers.

Magnets are actually a composite of thousands of miniature magnetic fields. Tiny crystals, or grains of metal, form a magnet much like a rock is made of distinct minerals. Each grain has one or more randomly aligned magnetic fields called domains. The ideal case is one domain per grain, but typically several grains cram into a single grain. The domain alignment affects the strength of the magnet. If researchers can get the domains all pointing in the same direction, then the magnet has an extremely strong magnetic field.

At the INEEL, Branagan forms magnets composed of grains so tiny that each one is too small to host more than one direction of magnetic field. The key is the unique nanocomposite structure, composed of nanoscale amorphous blobs less than one hundredth of a millionth of a meter across - 500 times smaller than a red blood cell.

Having only one magnetic field direction in each grain minimizes the chance of defects, says Branagan. "These defects are like a dam with a crack in it," he says. "Like a dam burst begins with a hairline crack, one magnetic domain pointing the wrong way creates a cascading effect, causing other domains to randomly realign." Since the tiny grains in the nanocomposite magnets have only one domain per grain, defective domains have less influence on their neighbors.