Tailoring coercive field in rare earth giant magnetostrictive materials byα-Fe precipitation

摘要

Rare earth giant magnetostrictive materials(GMMs)Tb_(1-x)Dy_(x)Fe_(2±δ)(Tb-Dy-Fe)have been successfully employed in many microelectromechanical devices due to their excellent magnetostrictive properties at room temperature.However,Tb-Dy-Fe still shows a relatively large coercivity with high hysteresis,which inevitably limits its application range.Herein,micromagnetic simulations are performed to investigate the size effect of precipitated phase(α-Fe)on coercivity in Tb-Dy-Fe.Simulation results demonstrate that the coercivity is reduced from 31.46 to 12.48 mT with increasing the size ofα-Fe from 4 to 50 nm in Tb-Dy-Fe since the precipitated phase ofα-Fe can act as a magnetization reversal nucleus.This decreasing trend of coercivity can be well fitted with an inverse square relationship,which agrees well with the nucleation theory.Our study highlights that the coercivity of Tb-Dy-Fe can be tailored by tuning the size ofα-Fe precipitation.