Pulsed Field Magnetometry

Existing Measurement Techniques

With the arrival and continuing development of high-coercivity rare-earth permanent magnets, increasingly higher magnetic fields need to be applied to these materials to measure their magnetic characteristics.

The limited fields of electromagnets (20-24 k oersted/1600-1900 kA/m) has led to the widespread use of superconducting magnets in Vibrating Sample Magnetometers (VSM's).  These are typically limited to fields of less than 10 Tesla and have the inconvenience of requiring liquid Helium cooling.  Their slow performance (measurement cycles of 10 minutes plus) make them unsuitable for many applications and a time consuming operation for others.  Where superconducting magnets are required to generate higher fields their costs become prohibitive in production applications.

Academic and research institutes developing new materials need to apply high fields of 20 Tesla plus to determine their full magnetic characteristics including anisotropy data obtained through Single Point Detection (SPD) techniques.  This can be achieved utilising Pulsed Field Magnetometry without the need for liquid Helium cooling and with considerably shorter measurement cycle times than available with other techniques.