Rare-earth materials have been dominating the permanent magnet industry since the discovery of SmCo5 and NdFeB at the end of the 20th century. However, due to the high cost of mining rare-earth materials alternative rare-earth free materials which require high magnetic saturation, remanence, coercivity and energy product have been of interest in the 21st century. In search of an alternative magnetic material properties such as nanomagnetism, exchange anisotropy, and shape anisotropy have been attempted to enhance the energy product of these alternative materials. Previously cobalt carbide, was found to have potential as a rare-earth free permanent magnet material, with a coercive force of 3000 Oe but lacked a high saturation value (50 emu g-1) needed for an efficient permanent magnet. On the other hand iron carbide is an attractive magnetic material due to its inexpensive composition and a high magnetization value of 140 emu g-1 for bulk material. Previously iron carbide has been synthesized as a nanomaterial with a semi-hard coercivty value as high as 700 Oe at room temperature. Within this work ruthenium a nucleating agent was used to fine tune the morphology from a monodispersed array of 30 nm nanoparticles, to formation of nanorods by varying the concentration of ruthenium. The magnetic properties of the iron carbide nanorods were investigated with vibrating sample magnetometry to observe the enhanced energy product from the decrease in the demagnetization field due to shape anisotropy. The development of inexpensive permanent magnets may be used to increase the use of electric motors for vehicles, and wind turbines for green energy.

Enhanced energy product of iron carbide nanorods induced by ruthenium

255th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.