Imaging of Magnetic Domains and Domain Walls in Spherical Fe-Si Powder Using Magnetic Force Microscopy

The commercial Fe-Si powder, produced by Högänes Corporation, represents promising soft magnetic material for technological applications. The powder consists of spherical particles with diameter up to 150 μm. Internal microstructure of the powder is formed by grains of diameter of about 30 μm. Each separate grain has a random orientation of the easy magnetization axis and is sufficiently large to split into several magnetic domains. A comparative study of the atomic force microscopy (AFM) topography and the corresponding magnetic force microscopy (MFM) images was employed in order to examine the correlation between the grain size, boundaries of grains and characterization of the magnetic domains, which gives us an important knowledge about possible behavior of particles under the influence of the external magnetic field and further utilization of the spherical Fe-Si particles in electrotechnical industry. The grain size and the crystallographic orientation of grains were analyzed by the electron backscattering diffraction (EBSD) technique.