Magnetostriction in rare earth -- transition metal alloys

稀土元素的f电子和过渡金属的d电子之间的相互作用产生了非常有用的性质，例如硬铁磁性（如用于今天的强永磁体）和巨磁致伸缩（如用于声学换能器）。这些材料在其基础材料物理学方面也很迷人。伯明翰大学和沃里克大学正在共同努力，以了解内在属性，从而设计稀土过渡金属磁体的关键设计原则，由EPSRC资助EP/M029034/1，题为“PretAMag”（“稀土过渡金属铝永磁磁体设计原理的物理学研究”）。位于伯明翰大学冶金与材料学院的研究所，将涉及材料的生长，并使用先进的表征技术（同步加速器X射线，中子散射，μ子自旋旋转）来详细探测磁致伸缩合金。

The interactions between the f-electrons of rare earth elements and the d-electrons of transition metals give rise to extremely useful properties such as hard ferromagnetism - as used in today's strong permanent magnets - and giant magnetostriction - as used e.g. in acoustic transducers.These materials are also fascinating in terms of their fundamental materials physics. The University of Birmingham and the University of Warwick are working together to understand the intrinsic properties and so devise key design principles of the rare-earth transition-metal magnets, supported by the EPSRC grant EP/M029034/1 entitled 'PretAMag' ("Investigations of the Physics underlying the principles of design of Rare Earth Transition metAl permanent MAGnets").This PhD project, based in the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham, will involve the growth of materials and use advanced characterisation techniques (synchrotron X-rays, neutron scattering, muon spin rotation) to probe magnetostrictive alloys in detail.