Stray field interaction of stacked amorphous tapes

In this study, magnetic cores made of amorphous rectangular tape layers are investigated. The quality factor Q of the tape material decreases rapidly, however, when stacking at least two tape layers. The hysteresis loop becomes non-linear, and the coercivity increases. These effects are principally independent of the frequency and occur whether tape layers are insulated or not. The Kerr-microscopy was used to monitor local hysteresis loops by varying the distance of two tape layers. The magnetization direction of each magnetic domain is influenced by the anisotropy axis, the external magnetic field and the stray field of magnetic domains of the neighboring tape layers. We found that crossed easy axes (as the extreme case for inclined axes) of congruent domains retain the remagnetization and induce a plateau of the local loop. Summarizing local loops leads to the observed increase of coercivity and non-linearity of the inductively measured loop. A high Q-factor can be preserved if the easy axes of stacked tape layers are identical within the interaction range in the order of mm. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.