Additive manufacturing of functionally graded Co-Fe and Ni-Fe magnetic materials

Accelerated development of soft magnetic materials is vital for addressing the challenges associated with improving the performance of electrical machines, transformer cores, electric vehicles etc. A combinatorial assessment of the structural, magnetic and mechanical properties of Co100-xFex (x = 30 to 70) and Ni100-xFex (x = 30 to 70) alloys has been carried out on samples fabricated via laser additive manufacturing (AM). Co100-xFex showed a bcc structure in the composition range studied while Ni100-xFex exhibited either single phase fcc or a mixture of fcc and bcc phases, depending on the composition. The saturation magnetization (M-s) for both Co100-xFex and Ni100-xFex compositionally graded alloys increases monotonically with increasing Fe content while the coercivity (H-c) variation is not monotonic. The M-s value of 199.3 emu/g for Co70Fe30 increases to 248 emu/g for Co30Fe70 alloys. Ni70Fe30 exhibits a M-s of 119.8 emu/g which increases to 168.7 emu/g for Ni30Fe70. The peak hardness is 260 VHN for the Co100-xFex series and 160VHN for the Ni100-xFex series. Such AM processed graded magnetic materials can be used for accelerated experiments to discover novel materials. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.