GRANULAR ND2FE14B W THIN-FILMS

Nanoparticles of the magnetically hard Nd2Fe14B phase embedded in a W matrix were successfully prepared for the first time by sputter deposi ting the two materials in a multilayer fashion and then annealing the samples to break the multilayer structure. TEM studies showed that the grains of the hard magnetic phase are isolated in the samples with hi gher W content, whereas in the rest of the samples they form clusters of a size of 50 nm, with an individual grain size of 10 nm. Besides th e tetragonal Nd2Fe14B phase, the orthorhombic intergranular WFeB phase was identified in the selected-area diffraction patterns. The coerciv ity of the Nd2Fe14B/W broken multilayers is increased compared with Nd 2Fe14B single layers prepared under the same conditions.