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.

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.