Study on the sintering method of Terfenol-D.

A sintering method, which is called low-temperature instantaneous liquid-phase sintering with addition of Sn, is exploited to fabricate Terfenol-D sintered compacts. In this work, the influences of powder size, Sn content, compaction pressure, and sintering technique on the magnetic and mechanical properties have been investigated. A large magnetostriction (λ∥) of 546 ppm at 12 kOe is obtained for the sintered compact fabricated at the following conditions: a powder size <75 μm, a Sn content of 8:100, a compaction pressure of 1.0 GPa, and sintering at 250 °C for 150 s in the rapid thermal processor. In addition, the sintered compact fabricated by this means possesses higher oxidation resistance and its hard brittleness improves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]