Remanence enhancement in nanostructured melt spun Sm(Fe/sub 0.209/Cu/sub 0.061/Zr/sub 0.025/Co/sub 0.704/)/sub 7.61/

Ribbons of an industrial, high coercivity grade of Sm/sub 2/Co/sub 17/ alloy have been produced by melt spinning at very high substrate velocities. X-ray diffraction has shown the resultant material to be single phase and nanostructured, with grain sizes ranging to below 30 nm. The remanence, J/sub r/, is consequently enhanced due to ferromagnetic exchange coupling, with values up to 0.75 T being observed. This corresponds to J/sub r//J/sub s/ (where J/sub s/ is the saturation polarisation) up to 0.7. Although the intrinsic coercivity is only moderate (up to 500 kA/m), it is still sufficiently high to give maximum energy product values up to 70 kJ/m/sup 3/.<>