Novel hard magnetic phase with Zr11.5Fe53Si35.5 composition

Abstract We performed a material search experiment in the Zr-Fe-Si ternary system to discover a new rare-earth-free hard magnetic phase. We adopted a high-throughput approach that quickly screens multi phase alloys by utilizing multimodal measurements. Our experiment revealed a hard magnetic phase with Zr11.5Fe53Si35.5 composition. The prepared alloys containing the hard magnetic phase showed coercivity up to 338 kA/m at room temperature even without any microstructure refinement process. The Curie temperature Tc of the phase was found to be in the range of 240–260 °C. The saturated magnetization Ms and the magnetic anisotropy field Ha of the phase were estimated to be ~24 Am2/kg and over 4775 kA/m, respectively, at room temperature. The electron diffraction patterns indicated that the phase has an orthorhombic crystal system in which the c-axis corresponds to the magnetic easy axis. This crystal structure is obviously different from the hexagonal structure previously reported in a similar composition of (Zr,Fe)5Si3. From these results, we conclude that the phase with Zr11.5Fe53Si35.5 composition is a novel hard magnetic compound that has never before been reported.