Analysis on coercivity enhancement mechanism of grain-boundary-diffused and Dual-alloyed Nd-Fe-B Magnets

With the rapid development of application fields, such as the green energy industry, has resulted in increased demand for magnetic characteristics, especially the coercivity (Hcj). In this paper, two types of (Nd, Dy)-Fe-B magnets with comparable Hcj values were prepared using by grain boundary diffusion (GBD) method and dual alloy (DA) method. The composition, microstructure, domain structure, and magnetization reversal process of GBD and DA magnets were subjected to comparison. Additionally, an analysis of the specific coercivity mechanism was also conducted by fitting the Brown's equation. The results of composition and microstructure analysis revealed the formation of core-shell structural grains were formed in both GBD and DA methods. Specifically, the GBD method exhibited a higher concentration of Dy in the shell, constituting 26.8 % of the total rare earth (RE) content. In contrast the DA magnets had Dy accounting for 15.8 % of the total RE content in the shell. This discrepancy was identified as the primary factor contributing to the superior efficiency in enhancing the coercivity (Hcj) observed in the GBD method. The fitting results showed that GBD magnets were more inclined to nucleate in the core region in grain, whereas DA magnets nucleate at the edge of the grain shell layer. Both the observation of magnetic domains and magnetization reversal processes analysis revealed that the demagnetization process in GBD magnets is more uniform, which leads to better squareness. Our finding can provide theoretical and experimental basis for the preparation of high-performance Nd-Fe-B magnets.