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Lecture

Anisotropy and Hard Magnets

In course

MSE-432: Introduction to magnetic materials in modern technologies

Interactive course addressing bulk and thin-film magnetic materials that provide application-specific functionalities in different modern technologies such as e.g. wind energy harvesting, electric article surveillance, spintronics, sensing, and data storag ...

Description

This lecture covers the fundamental concepts of anisotropy and hard magnets, including the exchange interaction, hysteretic behavior of magnetization, anisotropy, applications of hard magnets, magnetic domains, and domain walls. It also discusses the development of permanent magnets, key figure of merit (BH)max, and the characteristics of hard-magnetic materials. The lecture emphasizes the importance of energy product, coercive field, and uniaxial anisotropy in hard magnets, highlighting the role of rare earth elements with large spin-orbit coupling. Various structural qualities and features of hard magnets are explored, along with the challenges related to the supply chain of rare earth elements.

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Instructor

Dirk Grundler

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Physics

Condensed matter physics: Phase transitions

Related concepts (32)

Magnetic domain

A magnetic domain is a region within a magnetic material in which the magnetization is in a uniform direction. This means that the individual magnetic moments of the atoms are aligned with one another and they point in the same direction. When cooled below a temperature called the Curie temperature, the magnetization of a piece of ferromagnetic material spontaneously divides into many small regions called magnetic domains. The magnetization within each domain points in a uniform direction, but the magnetization of different domains may point in different directions.

Rare-earth magnet

A rare-earth magnet is a strong permanent magnet made from alloys of rare-earth elements. Developed in the 1970s and 1980s, rare-earth magnets are the strongest type of permanent magnets made, producing significantly stronger magnetic fields than other types such as ferrite or alnico magnets. The magnetic field typically produced by rare-earth magnets can exceed 1.2 teslas, whereas ferrite or ceramic magnets typically exhibit fields of 0.5 to 1 tesla. There are two types: neodymium magnets and samarium–cobalt magnets.

Ferrite (magnet)

A ferrite is a ceramic material made by mixing and firing iron(III) oxide (, rust) with one or more additional metallic elements, such as strontium, barium, manganese, nickel, and zinc. They are ferrimagnetic, meaning they are attracted by magnetic fields and can be magnetized to become permanent magnets. Unlike other ferromagnetic materials, most ferrites are not electrically conductive, making them useful in applications like magnetic cores for transformers to suppress eddy currents.

Magnet

A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, steel, nickel, cobalt, etc. and attracts or repels other magnets. A permanent magnet is an object made from a material that is magnetized and creates its own persistent magnetic field. An everyday example is a refrigerator magnet used to hold notes on a refrigerator door.

Magnetocrystalline anisotropy

In physics, a ferromagnetic material is said to have magnetocrystalline anisotropy if it takes more energy to magnetize it in certain directions than in others. These directions are usually related to the principal axes of its crystal lattice. It is a special case of magnetic anisotropy. In other words, the excess energy required to magnetize a specimen in a particular direction over that required to magnetize it along the easy direction is called crystalline anisotropy energy.

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