Investigation of Magnetization Processes from the Energy Losses in Soft Magnetic Composite Materials

Soft magnetic composite materials are composed of small ferromagnetic particles insulated from each other. It gives them some very good properties e.g. the magnetic isotropy and low total energy losses at medium to higher frequencies. On the other hand, their structure gives rise to the negative aspects as the inner demagnetizing fields, resulting in some specifics in magnetization processes leading to the worsening of soft magnetic properties, particularly the excess losses increase and a lowering of permeability. The frequency dependence of excess losses, the low and high induction loss components and the inner demagnetization factors of soft magnetic composites were investigated in order to reveal the proportions of the reversible and irreversible magnetization processes. Higher excess losses were observed in samples with smaller particles or higher non-ferromagnetic content (resin+pores), in which the inner demagnetizing fields were higher. It was explained by lower effective number of movable domain walls in those samples, thus less irreversible magnetization processes. This was confirmed by low and high induction loss analysis, where total losses were divided into low and high induction loss components and plotted vs. frequency.