New roots for synthesis of Cobalt carbide nanoparticles for rare earth free permanent magnets

Magnets have made a great impact in our daily lives, since they are present in all kind of modern devices. However, one of the problems we may encounter in near future is that the supply of materials from which the magnets are made, rare earths, may not be able to supply their demand. In addition, the usual production of magnets involves many steps in between, the melting of raw materials, mold casting, cooling, crushing and then pressing them into the desired shape. For those reasons, we propose the creation of permanent magnets from abundant materials, Cobalt and Carbon. Therefore, we propose synthesis of CoxC nanoparticles using super critical conditions (pressure and temperature). The materials precursors are mixed with solvent and heated up to its supercritical conditions where it decomposes to nanoscaled particles in powder shape, ready for being pressed. The morphology and phase structure were characterized using SEM and XRD to reveal cylindrical like shape and Co_xC orthorhombic phase structure respectively. The magnetic properties have been measured to yeild coercivity (Hc) of 760 Oe with saturation magnetization (Ms) of 37.41 emu/g, with an energy product of 2.84 MGOe. This method is still under optimization to reach the single phase of Co3C with higher Hc and Ms.