FePt magnetic particles prepared by surfactant-assisted ball milling

Abstract High-energy ball milling of Fe and Pt elemental powders has been carried out under dry and wet (in presence of solvent and surfactants) conditions. Dry milling leads to the formation of the disordered FCC-FePt alloy whereas by the wet milling procedure the main process is the decrease of Fe and Pt particle size, although some dissolution of Pt into Fe grains cannot be ruled out, and no hint of the formation of the FCC-FePt phase is observed even to milling times up to 20 h, as X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy and Mossbauer spectroscopy indicates. The as-milled particles were annealed at 600 °C for 2 h under Ar atmosphere. It is noticed that the disordered fcc-FePt phase observed in particles milled under dry conditions transform to ordered fct phase characterized by a hard magnetic behavior with a coercive field up to 10,000 Oe. However, those particles milled in the surfactant/solvent medium exhibit a soft magnetic behavior with a coercive field of 600 Oe. These results indicate that wet high-energy ball milling is not an adequate technique for obtaining single-phase FePt particles.