Textured PrCo5 nanoflakes with large coercivity prepared by low power surfactant-assisted ball milling

The effect of the milling time on the structure, morphology, coercivity, and remanence ratio of textured PrCo5 nanoflakes produced by low power surfactant-assisted ball milling (SABM) was investigated. The X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) patterns indicate that the SABM PrCo5 samples are all CaCu5-type hexagonal structure. The average grain size is smaller than 10 nm when the SABM time is equal to or longer than 5.5 h. The thickness of nanoflakes is mainly in the range of 50−100 nm while the length is 0.5−5 μm when the SABM time reaches 8 h. For the field-aligned PrCo5 nanoflakes, the out-of-plane texture is indicated from the increasing (0 0 l) peaks in the XRD patterns, and the easy magnetization direction is perpendicular to the flake surface. The strong texture of PrCo5 nanoflakes leads to a large coercivity Hc (7.8 kOe) and obvious anisotropic magnetic behaviors for the aligned samples.