Magnetostriction in rare earth -- transition metal alloys

The interactions between the f-electrons of rare earth elements and the d-electrons of transition metals give rise to extremely useful properties such as hard ferromagnetism - as used in today's strong permanent magnets - and giant magnetostriction - as used e.g. in acoustic transducers.
These materials are also fascinating in terms of their fundamental materials physics. The University of Birmingham and the University of Warwick are working together to understand the intrinsic properties and so devise key design principles of the rare-earth transition-metal magnets, supported by the EPSRC grant EP/M029034/1 entitled 'PretAMag' ("Investigations of the Physics underlying the principles of design of Rare Earth Transition metAl permanent MAGnets").
This PhD project, based in the School of Metallurgy and Materials at the University of Birmingham, will involve the growth of materials and use advanced characterisation techniques (synchrotron X-rays, neutron scattering, muon spin rotation) to probe magnetostrictive alloys in detail.