We made a high-speed motor and a DC brush-less motor for factory automation (FA) to investigate applicability of powder magnetic core to motor application, and compared those performances with the similar motors having conventional electro magnetic steel core. Permeability and saturated magnetization of powder magnetic core are less than those of elect romagnetic steel core, however output performances of each core motor are almost the same. The FA motor with powder magnetic core using three-dimensional magnetic circuit showed higher torque than the same volume motor with electromag netic steel core.

The amorphous alloy strip was pulverized to get a flake-shaped powder after annealing at for 90 min and subsequently ground to obtain finer flake-shaped powder by using a ball mill. The powder was mixed with polyimide-based binder of , and then the mixture was cold compacted to make a toroidal powder core. After crystallization treatment for 1 hour at , the powder was transformed from amorphous to nanocrystalline with the grain size of . Soft magnetic characteristics of the powder core was optimized at with the insulating binder of 3wt%. As a result, the powder core showed the outstanding magnetic properties in terms of core loss and permeability, which were originated from the optimization of the grain size and distribution of the insulating binder.

The influence of Hi-flux powders characteristics on the performance of magnetic powder cores was studied. It was found that different cooling rate and nozzle configuration could change the shape and microstructure of powders. Smooth surface and spherical shape of powders were beneficial to improve DC bias performance and reduce core losses of magnetic powder core.