Recent progress in high Bs Fe-based nanocrystalline soft magnetic alloys

High saturation magnetic flux density (high-B-s) alloy has been developed in an Fe-based nanocrystalline alloy system. A nanocrystalline phase with an average grain size of about 20 nm is obtained by annealing Cu-substituted and/or Cu-and-Si-complex-substituted Fe-B amorphous alloys. The alloy exhibits low coercivity of less than 7 A m(-1) and a high B-s of more than 1.8 T. The iron loss at 50 Hz and 1.6 T for a toroidal core made of Fe80.5Cu1.5Si4B14 nanocrystalline alloy is 0.46 W kg(-1), which is about 2/3 of that of grain-oriented Si steel. Moreover, the iron loss at 10 kHz and 0.2 T for a wound core made of this alloy is 7.5 W kg(-1), which is about 25% of that of non-grain-oriented Si steel and about 60% of that of an Fe-based amorphous alloy. In addition, the cut cores made of the alloy show good superimposed dc-current characteristics and appear promising in applications such as power choke coils (at the high-frequency region).