High permeability and low loss of Ni-Zn-Fe ferrite/metal composite cores in high frequency region

A Ni-Zn-Fe ferrite was deposited on the surface of Fe-Si and three kinds of Fe-Si-Cr powders as an insulating material using an ultrasonic-enhanced ferrite plating method. All ferrite-coated powders exhibited a high magnetization of about 180 emu/g derived from their soft magnetic metal and ferrite composition. The three different ferrite-coated Fe-Si-Cr cores annealed at 973 K exhibited a constant permeability μ′ of 55–60 in the frequency range up to 50 MHz owing to the insulating effect of the ferrite layer. In contrast, the permeability μ′ of the ferrite-coated Fe-3.5Si mass % core decreased in the MHz range. The Cr component acted as a passive layer that made it possible to maintain the Ni-Zn-Fe ferrite layer after annealing. The core loss of the ferrite-coated Fe-3.5Si-4.5Cr mass % core was 448 kW/m3 at 100 kHz and 50 mT, which was half of that observed for the Fe-3.5Si-4.5Cr core without ferrite layer. Additionally, the eddy-current loss of the ferrite-coated Fe-3.5Si-4.5Cr core was strongly decreased compared with the non-coated Fe-3.5Si-4.5Cr core owing to the insulating properties of the ferrite layer.