Other magnetic materials

In order to complete this review, a brief overview of magnetic materials other than oxides is presented in this chapter. Soft and hard metallic alloys are discussed first instead of a detailed account of the numerous alloy systems, this overview focuses on the mechanisms for obtaining specific microstructures, which, in turn, lead to a precise control of anisotropy in soft materials, and to coercivity in hard materials. These discussions include examples of classic alloys, as well as the recently developed soft amorphous alloys and the impressive supermagnets with extremely high coercive fields. 

Due to their impact on information storage technology, a brief account of materials for magnetic recording media and heads is presented. Materials for magnetooptical recording are also discussed. 

The last section is a short review of superconductors their amazing magnetic properties, as well as two of their present applications are discussed finally. In each section, an effort has been made to indicate new directions in magnetic materials research. 

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Other magnetic materials based on rare earth metals are NdFeB with neodynium Nd and SmCo with samarium Sm. These materials are characterized by huge magnetic forces at relatively small dimensions. 

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