A Sm-poor mixture of Fe-substituted Sm2Co17, having the nominal stoich
iometry of Sm0.080Co0.645Fe0.276, was ball-milled to explore the possi
bility of enhancing its remanence through direct microstructural refin
ement. With milling, the Sm-2(Co0.7Fe0.3)(17) compound disassociates t
o a body-centered-cubic supersaturated SmCoFe solid solution and a res
idual SmCoFe amorphous phase. Correspondingly, the coercive field valu
es first increase, peaking at 0.83 kOe after 180 min of milling, then
decrease with continued milling to <0.1 kOe after 1200 min. The remane
nce, as M-r/M-s, is measured to track closely the coercive field behav
ior, experiencing modest increases to 0.26 after just 120 min of milli
ng. Magnetization values are found to increase first with the dissocia
tion of the 2:17 phase, and again with the ejection of Sm from the bcc
component. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.