Developing new methods for studying the local atomic structure in the FeCo alloys needed for electric aircraft

There is a pressing need to reduce the emissions produced by civil aviation in order to meet global and national climate change targets. One of the key ways this could be achieved is by the use of electric aircraft for short haul aviation. To realise this transition, new higher-power density electric motors are required. Latest designs of these electric motors take advantage of high performance FeCo soft magnetic alloys for the motor cores. However, for these materials to be used in civil aviation a thorough understanding of the origins of these materials exceptional properties is needed to ensure safety. One of the important factors thought to impact these properties is the atomic arrangement of the Fe and Co atoms in these alloys. These arrangements can be ordered or disordered and can be over different length scales of the alloy. The main target of this project is to investigate short range ordering in these alloys. To achieve this, the local atomic structure in these alloys will be investigated using a state-of-the-art FEG monochromated, and probe corrected scanning transmission electron microscope recently installed in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge. New methods will be developed to characterise the short-range order and local atomic structure of these alloys. Once such methods have been established it will be used to investigate how this local structure formed by different processing conditions impacts the mechanical and magnetic properties of the FeCo alloys.