Enhanced anisotropy of Pr-Nd-Fe-B HDDR magnetic powders by regulating the hydrogen decrepitated process

The evolution of microstructures for different hydrogen decrepitated routes was investigated in hydrogenation-disproportionation-desorption-recombination (HDDR) magnetic powders, with particular focus on the fracture of the SC heat-treated alloy during two-step hydrogen decrepitation (HD) and the influence of the first step temperature on magnetic properties. As the temperature increases, the properties of the magnetic powders increase and then decrease, the optimized performance of HDDR magnetic powders was obtained with B r =1.45 T, (BH) max =393 kJ·m −3 , DOA=0.79 when the first HD temperature is 65°C. The microscopic analysis shows that there are two problems in the one-step HD route: one is that the particle size is larger ∼150 μm and there are incomplete fractured cracks, the particle surface is more PrNd-rich phase, which leads to different reaction rates between the surface and center in HDDR particles, and the texture orientation of the fine grains at the edge of surface and crack is disordered. The second issue is that HD grains have significant angular difference with the c-axis orientation in incomplete fractured grain clusters, which is directly inherited by the HDDR magnetic powder, resulting in a misalignment texture. In comparison, the two-step HD process effectively addresses the issues derived from one-step HD process. Not only is the grain size of HDDR magnetic powders uniform and the width of the thin grain boundary phases (GBs) is less than the exchange coupling length, but also (Fe+Co) content exceeding 30 at% in GBs with weak magnetism. This is beneficial for enhancing exchange coupling effect between adjacent grains. Moreover, magnetic powder particle exhibits single-domain characteristics, which improves the grain texture orientation. This research provides a new insight for the development of high-orientation and high-performance HDDR magnetic powders.