Recent developments of manganese-aluminium as rare-earth-free magnets

This article reviews findings and progresses in the past decade on manganese-aluminium (MnAl) based magnets as the interest has been revived to fulfill their potential as commercial magnets. The challenges in developments of these rare-earth-free magnets are to acquire a high remanence and coercivity from the ferromagnetic tau-phase in MnAl alloys. To this end, the phase transformation to this tau-MnAl with L1(0) body centered tetragonal structure has been promoted by a variety of methods and a few percents of carbon (C) is often added to prevent the phase decomposition. Magnetization and coercivity are not only influenced by the phase composition but also the microstructure. The fabrication processes and factors affecting the phase and microstructure are therefore covered. Finally, the productions of bulk MnAl magnets are addressed.