A comparative performance of oleic acid and mwnt-coated smco5/fe nanocomposites processed by magnetic field-assisted milling

Abstract

In the present study, a magnetic field-assisted milling process was adopted for the fabrication of SmCo5/Fe nanocomposites using oleic acid (OA) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) as surfactants. The bare SmCo5/Fe powders processed by conventional milling consist of large agglomerates accompanied by amorphization; while both the OA and MWNT-coated SmCo5/Fe powders possess unusual characteristics such as flake-like structures, reduction in grain size and grain orientation. The OA and MWNT-coated SmCo5/Fe powders also displayed high degree of texturing in terms of c-axis alignment of SmCo5 -phase. Enhanced coercivity (Hc) values of 4.37 and 4.67 kOe were obtained for the OA and MWNT-coated powders, respectively and these values significantly higher than that of the bare powders (1.49 kOe). Upon processing the surfactant-coated powders into polymer nanocomposites, relatively higher Hc (12.6 kOe) and Mr/Mmax (0.82) values were achieved for the MWNT-coated SmCo5/Fe nanocomposites as compared to that of the OA-coated counterparts (Hc = 10.2 kOe; Mr/Mmax = 0.70).