Gradient soft magnetic materials produced by additive manufacturing from non-magnetic powders

Abstract Additive manufacturing (AM) allows printing parts of complex geometries that cannot be produced by standard technologies. Besides, AM provides the possibility to create gradient materials with different structural and physical properties. We, for the first time, printed gradient soft magnetic materials from paramagnetic powders (316L steel and Cu-12Al-2Fe (in wt.%) aluminium bronze)). The magnetic properties can be adjusted during the in-situ printing process. The saturated magnetization value of alloys reaches 49 emu g−1. The changes in the magnetic properties have been attributed to the formation of the BCC phase after mixing two FCC-dominated powders. Moreover, the phase composition of the obtained gradient materials can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by the CALPHAD approach, thus providing efficient optimization of the performance. The obtained results provide new prospects for printing gradient magnetic alloys.