Grain refinement in heavy rare earth element-free sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets by addition of a small amount of molybdenum

We employed a modified refractory-metal-addition method to achieve higher coercivity and remanence in heavy rare earth element (HREE)-free Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets. This process involved inducing the formation of a homogeneous secondary phase at the grain boundaries during sintering, making it possible to control the intergrain diffusion by adding small amounts of Mo, a refractory metal. To control the microstructure of the secondary phase effectively, a metal organic compound of the refractory metal was coated on the surfaces of the particles of an HREE-free Nd-Fe-B powder. The average grain size after this process was 5.60 μm, which was approximately 1.8 μm smaller than that of the HREE-free sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets (7.4 μm). The coercivity of the magnets prepared through this process could be increased from 11.88 kOe to 13.91 kOe without decreasing their remanence.