Observation of Pseudopartial Grain Boundary Wetting in the NdFeB-Based Alloy

The NdFeB-based alloys were invented in 1980s and remain the best-known hard magnetic alloys. In order to reach the optimum magnetic properties, the grains of hard magnetic Nd2Fe14B phase have to be isolated from one another by the (possibly thin) layers of a non-ferromagnetic Nd-rich phase. In this work, we observe that the few-nanometer-thin layers of the Nd-rich phase appear between Nd2Fe14B grains due to the pseudopartial grain boundary (GB) wetting. Namely, some Nd2Fe14B/Nd2Fe14B GBs are not completely wetted by the Nd-rich melt and have the high contact angle with the liquid phase and, nevertheless, contain the 2-4-nm-thin uniform Nd-rich layer.