Magnetization reversal behavior of SmCo6.6Nb0.4 nanoflakes prepared by surfactant-assisted ball milling

In this paper, the recoil loops of SmCo6.6Nb0.4 nanoflakes prepared by the surfactant-assisted high energy ball milling (SA-HEBM) were systematically studied. The recoil loop openness was observed in both the aligned and non-aligned samples. Reversible and irreversible portions of the demagnetization process derived from the recoil loop were also investigated. For both the aligned and non-aligned samples, reversible portion (▵mrev) is too small to determine the coercivity. Irreversible portion (▵mirrev) shows similar tendency, i.e. increasing slowly at low reverse field and then growing up rapidly after a critical field (nucleation field Hno). The demagnetization process can be described as following: the reversible demagnetization is dominant when the applied reverse field is lower than 8 kOe, under which the irreversible nucleation also occurs. The reverse domain walls are pinned by the grain boundaries until the reverse field is larger than 8 kOe. With increasing field, the pinning effects are weakened and the rapid reversible demagnetization starts. Finally, the demagnetization process is accomplished. The values of ΔM in the Henkel plots are totally opposite for the aligned and non-aligned SmCo6.6Nb0.4 nanoflakes.