Application of high magnetic fields in advanced materials processing

Applied Superconductivity Laboratory, Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, China Correspondence should be addressed to Ma Yanwei (email: ywma@mail.iee.ac.cn) Received July 2, 2006; accepted November 6, 2006 Abstract Recently, steady magnetic fields available from cryogen-free superconducting magnets open up new ways to process materials. In this paper, the main results obtained by using a high magnetic field to process several advanced materials are reviewed. These processed objects primarily include superconducting, magnetic, metallic and nanometer-scaled materials. It has been found that a high magnetic field can effectively align grains when fabricating the magnetic and non-magnetic materials and make inclusions migrate in a molten metal. The mechanism is discussed from the theoretical viewpoint of magnetization energy.