Materials Science and Engineering B76 (2000) 169 – 171 Letter Characterization of crystalline texture and magnetic properties of melt-spun Sm(Co 0.8 Fe 0.1 Cu 0.08 Zr 0.02 ) 7.4 alloy A.-Ru Yan *, Wen-Yong Zhang, Hong-Wei Zhang, Bao-Gen Shen State Key Laboratory of Magnetism, Institute of Physics and Center of Condensed Matter Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People’s Republic of China Received 23 October 1999; accepted 3 February 2000 Abstract A high degree of texture has been observed for the first time in melt-spun Sm(Co 0.8 Fe 0.1 Cu 0.08 Zr 0.02 ) 7.4 ribbons prepared by single-roller melt spinning at low wheel velocities (6 =5ms -1 ) and the characterization of their crystalline texture and magnetic properties are reported in this paper. Analyses of X-ray diffraction indicate that the ribbons exhibit a strong (002) texture parallel to their longitudinal direction. The formation of the crystallographic texture is attributed to a directional solidification process resulting from a temperature gradient. The remanance ratio M r /M s is found to depend sensitively on the angle f between the applied fields and the longitudinal direction of ribbons. Magnetization studies on ribbons show intrinsic coercivity of 4.6 kOe and maximum energy product of 12.3 MGOe. © 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. Keywords: Crystalline texture; Magnetic properties; Melt-spun; Sm (Co 0.8 Fe 0.1 Cu 0.08 Zr 0.02 ) 7.4 alloy www.elsevier.com/locate/mseb Oriented permanent magnets can be produced by the alignment of hard magnetic phase. Several different alignment processes have been reported in the litera- ture, powder metallurgy technique [1 – 4], directional solidification technique [5] and solidification in a mag- netic field [6]. In past years, some efforts have been devoted to developing anisotropic melt-spun R – Fe – B ribbons [7 – 10]. A preference for tetragonal c -axis ori- entation normal to the surface of melt-spun ribbons was observed in R–Fe–B system. Recently, we have succeeded in preparing magnetically anisotropic SmCo 5 ribbons with high permanent performance ((BH) max = 18.2 MGOe) by single-roller melt spinning at low wheel velocities [11]. The anisotropy is found to be associated with a crystallographic texture formed during melt spinning process, with the c axis parallel to longitudinal direction of the ribbons, which is completely different from that of in R–Fe–B system. These results indicate that low wheel speed is helpful to promote the forma- tion of anisotropic melt-spun ribbons and the charac- terization of crystalline texture has a close relationship with magnetic properties of the alloy system. The 2:17-type Sm(CoFeCuZr) z magnets, having the highest Curie temperature among the commercial rare- earth permanent magnets, have attracted considerable interest for high-temperature applications because of their large energy products and high-temperature per- formance. In this paper, the formation of anisotropic melt-spun Sm(CoFeCuZr) z ribbons has been observed for the first time and the characterization of their crystalline texture and magnetic properties are reported. The alloy with nominal composition Sm(Co 0.8 Fe 0.1 - Cu 0.08 Zr 0.02 ) 7.4 was prepared by arc melting. Small pieces of ingots were then inserted into a 10-mm diame- ter quartz tube with a nozzle of 0.8 mm in diameter. The chamber was evacuated to a vacuum of 10 -2 Pa and then filled with high purity Argon. The sample was induction melted and ejected through the nozzle using a pressure difference of 0.8 atm. The surface velocity of Cu wheel was 5 and 40 m s -1 . Melt-spun ribbons were annealed at a temperature of 800°C for 1 h under vacuum and then slowly cooled to room temperature. Melt-spun and subsequently annealed ribbons were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD) with Cu radiation. The results confirm that only one phase, having the Sm 2 Co 17 structure, was present in the melt-spun rib- * Corresponding author. 0921-5107/00/$ - see front matter © 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved. PII:S0921-5107(00)00428-1