Recent developments in nanocrystalline and nanocomposite rare earth-transition metal magnets are reviewed and emphasis is placed on research work at IFW Dresden. Principal synthesis methods include high energy ball milling, melt spinning, mold casting and hydrogen assisted methods such as reactive milling and hydrogenation-disproportionation-desorption-recombination. These techniques are applied to NdFeB-, PrFeB- and SmCo-type systems with the aim to produce high remanence magnets with high coercivity. Concepts of maximizing the energy density in nanostructured magnets by either inducing a texture via anisotropic HDDR or hot deformation or enhancing the remanence via magnetic exchange coupling are evaluated. With respect to high temperature applications melt spun ribbons were prepared, which showed coercivities of up to 0.53 T at 50. Partially amorphous alloys were prepared by copper mold casting. The effect of transition metal content on the glass-forming ability and the magnetic properties was investigated. The alloy exhibits an amorphous structure shown by the corresponding diffraction pattern. A small substitution of Co by 2.5 at.% Fe results In the formation of Fe-rich crystallites embedded in the Nd-rich amorphous matrix. The Fe-rich crystallites show hard magnetic behaviour at room temperature with a coercivity value of about 0.4 T, relatively low saturation magnetization and a Curie temperature of 500 K.

Electrical contact property of the W-20wt%Cu contact materials manufactured by liquid phase sintering of nanocomposite W-Cu powders was investigated and discussed in terms of microstructural development during performance test. Nanocomposite powders were prepared by hydrogen reduction of ball milled W-Cu oxide mixture. They underwent complete densification and microstructural homogenization during liquid phase sintering. As a consequence, the W-Cu contacts produced from nanocomposite powders showed superior contact property of lower arc erosion and stable contact resistance. This might be mostly due to the fact that the arc erosion by evaporation of Cu liquid droplets and surface cracking remarkably became weakened. It is concluded that the improvement of anti-arc erosion of the composite specimen is basically attributed to microstructural homogeneity.