Nuclear probes of magnetic order

稀土磁铁现在无处不在，被用于电机和执行器，任何地方的电力转换为运动。例如磁盘驱动器中的电机，移动磁盘和读写头，便携式电动工具（钻头，锯子，驱动器等）中的电机，汽车上的远程门锁。它们涉及到现代科技的方方面面。促成这场革命的材料是稀土/铁化合物Nd2Fe14B。这是在20世纪80年代初发现的，作为我参与的快速淬火液态金属基础研究的一部分。

Rare earth magnets are now ubiquitous, being used in motors and actuators anywhere electricity is converted into motion. Examples range from motors in disc drives, moving both the disc and the read/write head, motors in portable power tools (drills, saws, drivers, etc...), remote door locks on cars. They touch every aspect of our modern technology. The material that enabled this revolution is the rare earth/iron compound Nd2Fe14B. This was discovered in the early 1980s as part of fundamental research on rapidly quenched liquid metals in which I was involved. In my work I seek to understand how things become magnetic - where their magnetic moment comes from - and how they order -- how, once the moment has formed, those moment choose to arrange themselves in a magnetic material. While my work is primarily fundamental in nature, a proper understanding of these basic issues is essential to the development of new, high performance magnetic materials. Over the next five years I will be concentrating on a group of rare earth based materials that are widely regarded as "off limits" or at least very difficult to study. However, as a result of techniques that I developed in collaboration with scientists at the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre, we have been able to open these materials to more detailed study. I will be looking at marginal magnetic materials based on samarium, europium and ytterbium where the magnetic moments are just forming and are easily affected by changes in materials chemistry. I will also be looking at very well defined moments on gadolinium compounds where experimental difficulties had previously precluded detailed study.