Because magnets fabricated using Nd-Fe-B exhibit excellent magnetic properties, this novel material is used in various high-tech industries. However, because of the brittleness and low formability of Nd-Fe-B magnets, the design freedom of shapes for improving the performance is limited based on conventional tooling and postprocessing. Laserpowder bed fusion (L-PBF), the most famous additive manufacturing (AM) technique, has recently emerged as a novel process for producing geometrically complex shapes of Nd-Fe-B parts owing to its high precision and good spatial resolution. However, because of the repeated thermal shock applied to the materials during L-PBF, it is difficult to fabricate a dense Nd-Fe-B magnet. In this study, a high-density (>96%) Nd-Fe-B magnet is successfully fabricated by minimizing the thermal residual stress caused by substrate heating during L-PBF.

In this research, the magnetic abrasive finishing process using (Nd-Fe-B) permanent magnet was applied to confirm the performance and to find the optimum conditions. The STS304 bar was used as the specimen in this experiment. In order to confirm the performance of magnetic abrasive finishing process, the surface roughness (Ra) and diameter reduction were measured when the specimens were processed under the conditions of rotational speeds, frequencies, and magnetic pole shapes. The rotational speeds were varied at 8000rpm, 15000rpm, 20000rpm, and 25000rpm. And the frequencies were changed to 0Hz, 4Hz and 10Hz. Also the shapes of the magnetic pole were changed to flat edge, sharp edge and round edge. It can be concluded that the surface roughness (Ra) and diameter reduction were found to be the best at 25000rpm, 4Hz, flat edge.

Neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) sintered magnets have excellent magnetic properties such as the remanence, coercive force, and the maximum energy product compared to other hard magnetic materials. The coercive force of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets is improved by the addition of heavy rare earth elements such as dysprosium and terbium instead of neodymium. Then, the magnetocrystalline anisotropy of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets increases. However, additional elements have increased the production cost of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets. Hence, a study on the control of the microstructure of Nd-Fe-B magnets is being conducted. As the coercive force of magnets improves, the grain size of the Nd2Fe14B grain is close to 300 nm because they are nucleation-type magnets. In this study, fine particles of Nd-Fe-B are prepared with various grinding energies in the pulverization process used for preparing sintered magnets, and the microstructure and magnetic properties of the magnets are investigated.

Recently, the grain boundary diffusion process (GBDP), involving heavy rare-earth elements such as Dy and Tb, has been widely used to enhance the coercivity of Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets. For example, a Dy compound is coated onto the surface of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets, and then the magnets are heat treated. Subsequently, Dy diffuses into the grain boundaries of Nd-Fe-B magnets, forming Dy-Fe-B or Nd-Dy-Fe-B. The dip-coating process is also used widely instead of the GBDP. However, it is quite hard to control the thickness uniformity using dip coating. In this study, first, a DyF3 paste is fabricated using DyF3 powder. Subsequently, the fabricated DyF3 paste is homogeneously coated onto the surface of a Nd-Fe-B sintered magnet. The magnet is then subjected to GBDP to enhance its coercivity. The weight ratio of binder and DyF3 powder is controlled, and we find that the coercivity enhances with decreasing binder content. In addition, the maximum coercivity is obtained with the paste containing 70 wt% of DyF3 powder.

We investigate the microstructural and magnetic property changes of DyH2, Cu + DyH2, and Al + DyH2 diffusion-treated NdFeB sintered magnets with the post annealing (PA) temperature. The coercivity of all the diffusiontreated magnets increases with increasing heat treatment temperature except at 910oC, where it decreases slightly. Moreover, at 880oC, the coercivity increases by 3.8 kOe in Cu and 4.7 kOe in Al-mixed DyH2-coated magnets, whereas this increase is relatively low (3.0 kOe) in the magnet coated with only DyH2. Both Cu and Al have an almost similar effect on the coercivity improvement, particularly over the heat treatment temperature range of 790-880oC. The diffusivity and diffusion depth of Dy increases in those magnets that are treated with Cu or Al-mixed DyH2, mainly because of the comparatively easy diffusion path provided by Cu and Al owing to their solubility in the Nd-rich grain boundary phase. The formation of a highly anisotropic (Nd, Dy)2Fe14B phase layer, which acts as the shell in the core-shell-type structure so as to prevent the reverse domain movement, is the cause of enhanced coercivity of diffusion-treated Nd-Fe-B magnets.

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.

A novel route to prepare Nd-Fe-B magnetic particles by utilizing both spray drying and reduction/diffu- sion processes was investigated in this study. Precursors were prepared by spray drying method using the aqueous solu- tions containing Nd salt, Fe salt and boric acid with stoichiometric ratios. Precursor particles could be obtained with various sizes from 2 to 10 µm by controlling concentrations of the solutions and the average size of 2 µm of precursors were selected for further steps. After heat treatment of precursors in air, Nd and Fe oxides were formed through desalt- ing procedure, followed by reduction processes in Hydrogen (H2) atmosphere and with Calcium (Ca) granules in Argon (Ar) successively. Moreover, diffusion between Nd and Fe occurred during Ca reduction and Nd2Fe14B particles were formed. With Ca amount added to particles after H2 reduction, intrinsic coercivity was changed from 1 to 10 kOe. In order to remove and leach CaO and residual Ca, de-ionized water and dilute acid were used. Acidic solutions were more effective to eliminate impurities, but Fe and Nd were dissolved out from the particles. Finally, Nd2Fe14B magnetic particles were synthesized after washing in de-ionized water with a mean size of 2 µm and their maximum energy prod- uct showed 9.23 MGOe.

High-coercive (Nd,Dy)-Fe-B magnets were fabricated via dysprosium coating on Nd-Fe-B powder. The sputtering coating process of Nd–Fe–B powder yielded samples with densities greater than 98%. (Nd,Dy)2Fe14B phases may have effectively penetrated into the boundaries between neighboring Nd2Fe14B grains during the sputtering coating process, thereby forming a (Nd,Dy)2Fe14B phase at the grain boundary. The maximum thickness of the Dy shell was approximately 70 nm. The maximum coercivity of the Dy sputter coated samples(sintered samples) increased from 1162.42 to 2020.70 kA/m. The microstructures of the (Nd,Dy)2Fe14B phases were effectively controlled, resulting in mproved magnetic properties. The increase in coercivity of the Nd-Fe-B sintered magnet is discussed from a micro- structural point of view.

Effect of Cu and powder mixing with Cu-free (Nd, Dy)-Fe-B jet-milled powder on the magnetic properties of sintered magnets was investigated. The coercivity of a magnet prepared from the Cu-free (Nd, Dy)-Fe-B powder was about 10 kOe even though the alloy powder already contained some Dy (3.5 wt%). When small copper powder was blended, however, the coercivity of the magnet increased almost 100%, exhibiting about 20 kOe. On the contrary, the coercivity enhancement was moderate, about 4 kOe, when dysprosium content in the sintered magnet was simply increased to 4.9 wt% by the addition of small 3 powder.

The HDDR(hydrogenation-disproportionation-desorption-recombination) process can be used as an effective way of converting no coercivity Nd-Fe-B material, with a coarse grain structure to a highly coercive one with a fine grain. Careful control of the HDDR process can lead to an anisotropic without any post aligning process. In this study, the effect of hydrogen gas input at various temperature in range of of hydrogenation stage (named Modified-solid HDDR, MS-HDDR) on the magnetic properties has been investigated. The powder from the modified-solid HDDR process exhibits Br of 11.7 kG and iHc of 10.7 kOe, which are superior to those of the powder prepared using the normal HDDR process.

Effect of Cu content on microstructural and magnetic properties of a (wt.%), (x = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5) strip-cast was studied. The average inter-lamellar spacing in the free surface and wheel side of the strip cast increased as the Cu content increases. The grain uniformity, the grain alignment, and (00L) texture of the strip cast increased with Cu contents up to 0.4 wt.%. These microstructural changes were attributed to the decrease of the effective cooling rate of the melted alloy caused by the decrease of the melting temperature of resulting from Cu addition. Coercivity and remanence were increased because of the grain alignment and (00L) texture improvement with Cu contents up to 0.4 wt.%.

Sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets have been widely used due to their excellent magnetic properties, especially for driving motors of hybrid and electric vehicles. The microstructure of Nd-Fe-B magnets strongly affects their magnetic properties, in particular the coercivity. Therefore, a post-sintering process like heat-treatment is required for improving the magnetic properties of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets. In this study, cyclic heat treatment was performed at temperatures between and up to 16 cycles in order to control microstructures such as size and shape of the Nd-rich phase without grain growth of the phase. The 2 cycles specimen at this temperature range showed more homogeneous microstructure which leads to higher coercivity of 35 kOe than as-sintered one.