High-performance magnets of rare-earth intermetallics due to an unusual magnetization process

Due to the crystalline field, the rare-earth atoms in low symmetry may show a high magnetic anisotropy. In such materials, especially in Dy3Al2and TbNi1-xCux(0 < x < 0.4), because of the high anisotropy, the energy of narrow walls can be smaller than that of Bloch walls. Such narrow walls are frozen as long as the applied field is smaller than a critical field approximately equal to the coercive field. The coexistence of a large remanent magnetization and a large coercive field associated with this new type of domain wall suggests that such materials may be highly feasible for permanent magnets.