Abstract
Air-atomized pure aluminum powder together with Fe2ZnNiCuO6 (FR) powder was mechanically alloyed (MAed) using a vibrational ball mill, and the MAed composite powders were consolidated into bulk materials by spark plasma sintering (SPS) in order to fabricate the Al-based composite materials having magnetic properties. Changes in hardness, constituent phases and soft magnetic properties of both the MAed powders and SPS materials were examined by microhardness measurements, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM), respectively. The Vickers microhardness of the MAed powders increased by both increase in MA time and the amount of FR powder addition. No solid-state reactions could be detected in the MAed powders. The saturation magnetic flux density for the MAed powders were found to depend only on the amount of the FR powder present. The coercive force was suppressed by MA processing for FR powder with the present of aluminum. FR was decomposed to ZnO when the MAed powder was SPSed at 673 K and 773 K, whereas Al13Fe4, α-Al2O3 and Al4C3 were detected when the MAed powder was SPSed at temperatures above 873 K. Therefore, magnetic properties with the SPS material fabricated at 773 K was shown. In fabricating aluminum based composite materials having magnetic properties, the best SPS condition was showed at 773 K.
