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.

Sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets are widely used in many fields such as motors, generators, actuators, microwaves and so on due to their excellent magnetic properties. Many researchers have shown that the Nd-rich phase was essentially important for high magnet properties. In this study, we focused on controlling of the Nd-rich phase to enhance magnetic properties by the cyclic sintering process. Nd-Fe-B based sintered magnets were prepared by isothermal sintering and cyclic sintering processes. Magnetic properties and microstructure of the magnets were investigated. The coercivity was enhanced from 21.2 kOe to 23.27 kOe after 10 cycles of the sintering. The Nd-rich phase was effectively penetrated into the grain boundary between the grains by the cyclic sintering.

In this study, a convergent heat treatment was performed in certain temperature regions in order to control the microstructures of Nd-rich phases and to reduce thermal stress on grain boundaries which could be caused during expansion and shrinkage of Nd-rich and phases. The difference of thermal expansion coefficient between and Nd-rich phases is the mechanism for convergent heat treatment. The Nd-rich phases which were located in junctions could penetrate into the grain boundaries between phases due to the difference of thermal expansion coefficient. Through the convergent heat treatment, the microcracks that were observed in cyclic heat treatment were not observed and coercivity was increased to 34.05 kOe at 8 cycles.