Effect of grain growth inhibitors on the hysteresis properties of Nd/sub 10/Fe/sub 82/C/sub 6/B/sub 2/ alloys

Summary form only given. In our previous work (IEEE Trans. Mag. vol.36, p.3315, (2000)), we studied the effect of carbon on the formation and magnetic properties of nanocomposite Nd/sub 2/Fe/sub 14/(C,B)//spl alpha/-Fe magnets. In the Nd/sub 10/Fe/sub 82/B/sub 8-x/C/sub x/ (x=0,2,4,5, 6,7) as-spun ribbons for x=0-4 have a majority 2:14:1 phase with some /spl alpha/-Fe, whereas, for larger x the mixture of 2:14:1 phase and /spl alpha/-Fe is obtained only at certain wheel speeds range. Beyond this range, the 2:17 phase and a significant amount of /spl alpha/-Fe were obtained instead, which transform into the tetragonal 2:14:1 phase after annealing. Magnetic measurements showed a slight enhancement of the coercivity (8.7 kOe) for x=2 and then a decrease for larger x. The drop of the coercivity with carbon content can be related to the change in the crystallization behavior and the coarsening of the microstructure. In this work, we study the effect of small substitutions (i.e. Zr, Nb, Cr, Ga, etc.) for iron, in melt-spun Nd/sub 10/Fe/sub 82-x/M/sub x/B/sub 2/C/sub 6/ in order to optimize their microstructure and therefore their magnetic hysteresis properties.