Effect of Ge doping on the magnetic properties of Fe-6.5Si soft magnetic composites

In this work, the effect of Ge content on the soft magnetic properties and microstructure of FeSiGe soft magnetic powder cores (SMPCs) was systematically investigated. The results show that the addition of Ge is beneficial to increase the electrical resistivity of Fe93.5-xSi6.5Gex SMPCs, and the coercivity (Hc) shows a trend of decreasing and then increasing with the increase of Ge content. When the content of Ge is 2 wt%, the SMPCs exhibit the best magnetic properties with stable effective permeability of 78.4 up to 1 MHz, low core loss of 589.5 mW/cm3 at a maximum magnetic induction of 0.1 T and frequency of 50 kHz. By doping with Ge, the micro-vortex dots in the magnetic domain structure are reduced and the domain walls move more easily with the applied field, and the magnetic properties are improved.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CCBY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).