High-Permeability Magnetic Nanocomposite for High Power Applications

"The U.S. Navy seeks electrical means of launching aircraft, requiring cost effective magnetic materials with high saturation magnetization, high permeability and linear magnetizing behavior. Inframat proposes to demonstrate the feasibility of exploiting aFeCo/Al2O3 soft magnetic nanocomposite for improved magnetic performance to satisfy Navy's needs. High permeability FeCo/Al2O3 nanocomposite will be chemically synthesized using Inframat's economically viable aqueous solution method. The synthesizedFeCo/Al2O3 nanocomposite will be consolidated into magnetic components, and tested. The design of this nanocomposite is based on the concept of exchange coupling, a quantum effect taking place between neighboring nanoparticles. Because of highresistivity, bulk sized FeCo/Al2O3 components can be manufactured without laminating, leading to significantly improved mechanical strength, compared with conventional components made by assembling metallic alloy strips. The proposed FeCo/Al2O3nanocomposite is expected to possess higher saturation magnetization, higher permeability, higher electrical resistivity, higher Curie temperature, and lower power loss in the dynamic magnetization (such as pulsed magnetizing) process than the currentlyavailable Fe-Si alloys. Processing procedures involved in fabricating FeCo/Al2O3 cores will be simpler than the metallurgy processing in fabricating laminated metallic magnetic cores, leading to manufacturin