Iron oxide (ε-Fe2O3) is emerging as a promising electromagnetic material due to its unique magnetic and electronic properties. This review focuses on the intrinsic properties of ε-Fe2O3, particularly its high coercivity, comparable to that of rare-earth magnets, which is attributed to its significant magnetic anisotropy. These properties render it highly suitable for applications in millimeter wave absorption and high-density magnetic storage media. Furthermore, its semiconducting behavior offers potential applications in photocatalytic hydrogen production. The review also explores various synthesis methods for fabricating ε-Fe2O3 as nanoparticles or thin films, emphasizing the optimization of purity and stability. By exploring and harnessing the properties of ε-Fe2O3, this study aims to contribute to the advancement of next-generation electromagnetic materials with potential applications in 6G wireless telecommunications, spintronics, high-density data storage, and energy technologies.

Rare earth magnets are the strongest type of permanent magnets and are integral to the high tech industry, particularly in clean energies, such as electric vehicle motors and wind turbine generators. However, the cost of rare earth materials and the imbalance in supply and demand still remain big problems to solve for permanent magnet related industries. Thus, a magnet with abundant elements and moderate magnetic performance is required to replace rare-earth magnets. Recently, a”-Fe16N2 has attracted considerable attention as a promising candidate for next-generation non-rare-earth permanent magnets due to its gigantic magnetization (3.23 T). Also, metastable a”-Fe16N2 exhibits high tetragonality (c/a = 1.1) by interstitial introduction of N atoms, leading to a high magnetocrystalline anisotropy constant (K1 = 1.0MJ/m3). In addition, Fe has a large amount of reserves on the Earth compared to other magnetic materials, leading to low cost of raw materials and manufacturing for industrial production. In this paper, we review the synthetic methods of metastable a”-Fe16N2 with film, powder and bulk form and discuss the approaches to enhance magnetocrystalline anisotropy of a”-Fe16N2. Future research prospects are also offered with patent trends observed thus far.

We report a facile method for preparing KIT-1 mesoporous silicates with two different macroporous structures by dual templating. As a template for macropores, polystyrene (PS) beads are assembled into uniform three dimensional arrays by ice templating, i.e., by growing ice crystals during the freezing process of the particle suspension. Then, the polymeric templates are directly introduced into the precursor-gel solution with cationic surfactants for templating the mesopores, which is followed by hydrothermal crystallization and calcination. Later, by burning out the PS beads and the surfactants, KIT-1 mesoporous silicates with macropores are produced in a powder form. The macroporous structures of the silicates can be controlled by changing the amount of EDTANa4 salt under the same templating conditions using the PS beads and inverse-opal or hollow structures can be obtained. This strategy to prepare mesoporous powders with controllable macrostructures is potentially useful for various applications especially those dealing with bulky molecules such as, catalysis, separation, drug carriers and environmental adsorbents.

In this study, we fabricated Nd2Fe14B hard magnetic powders with various sizes via spray drying combined with reduction-diffusion process. Spray drying is widely used to produce nearly spherical particles that are relatively homogeneous. Thus, the precursor particles were prepared by spray drying using the aqueous solution containing Nd salts, Fe salts and boric acid with the target stoichiometric composition of Nd2Fe14B. The mean particle sizes of the spray-dried powders are in the range from one to seven micrometer, which are adjusted by controlling the concentra- tions of precursor solutions. After debinding the as-prepared precursor particles, ball milling was also conducted to con- trol the particle sizes of Nd-Fe-B oxide powders. The resulting particles with different sizes were subjected to subsequent treatments including hydrogen reduction, Ca reduction and washing for CaO removal. The size effect of Nd-Fe-B oxide particles on the formation of Nd2Fe14B phase and magnetic properties was investigated.