Magnetic core materials
Having no magnetically active core material (an "air core") provides very low inductance in most situations, so a wide range of high-permeability materials are used to concentrate the field. Most high-permeability material are ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic.
Soft iron
"Soft" (annealed) iron is used in magnetic assemblies, electromagnets and in some electric motors; and it can create a concentrated field that is as much as 50,000 times more intense than an air core.[2]
Iron is desirable to make magnetic cores, as it can withstand high levels of magnetic field without saturating (up to 2.16 teslas at ambient temperature.[3])
It is also used because, unlike "hard" iron, it does not remain magnetised when the field is removed, which is often important in applications where the magnetic field is required to be repeatedly switched.
Unfortunately, due to the electrical conductivity of the metal, at AC frequencies a bulk block or rod of soft iron can often suffer from large eddy currents circulating within it that waste energy and cause undesirable heating of the iron.
Laminated silicon steel
Main article: Silicon steel
Because iron is a relatively good conductor, it cannot be used in bulk form with a rapidly changing field, such as in a transformer, as intense eddy currents would appear due to the magnetic field, resulting in huge losses (this is used in induction heating).
Two techniques are commonly used together to increase the resistivity of iron: lamination and alloying of the iron with silicon.
Lamination
Typical EI Lamination.
Laminated magnetic cores are made of thin, insulated iron sheets, lying, as much as possible, parallel with the lines of flux. Using this technique, the magnetic core is equivalent to many individual magnetic circuits, each one receiving only a small fraction of the magnetic flux (because their section is a fraction of the whole core section). Because eddy currents flow around lines of flux, the laminations prevent most of the eddy currents from flowing at all, restricting any flow to much smaller, thinner and thus higher resistance regions. From this, it can be seen that the thinner the laminations, the lower the eddy currents.
Silicon alloying
A small addition of silicon to iron (around 3%) results in a dramatic increase of the resistivity, up to four times higher[citation needed]. Further increase in silicon concentration impairs the steel's mechanical properties, causing difficulties for rolling due to brittleness.
Among the two types of silicon steel, grain-oriented (GO) and grain non-oriented (GNO), GO is most desirable for magnetic cores. It is anisotropic, offering better magnetic properties than GNO in one direction. As the magnetic field in inductor and transformer cores is static (compared to that in electric motors), it is possible to use GO steel in the preferred orientation.
Carbonyl iron
Main article: carbonyl iron
Powdered cores made of carbonyl iron, a highly pure iron, have high stability of parameters across a wide range of temperatures and magnetic flux levels, with excellent Q factors between 50 kHz and 200 MHz. Carbonyl iron powders are basically constituted of micrometer-size spheres of iron coated in a thin layer of electrical insulation. This is equivalent to a microscopic laminated magnetic circuit (see silicon steel, above), hence reducing the eddy currents, particularly at very high frequencies.
A popular application of carbonyl iron-based magnetic cores is in high-frequency and broadband inductors and transformers.
Iron powder
Powdered cores made of hydrogen reduced iron have higher permeability but lower Q. They are used mostly for electromagnetic interference filters and low-frequency chokes, mainly in switched-mode power supplies.
Ferrite
Main article: Ferrite (magnet)
Ferrite ceramics are used for high-frequency applications. The ferrite materials can be engineered with a wide range of parameters. As ceramics, they are essentially insulators, which prevents eddy currents, although losses such as hysteresis losses can still occur.
Vitreous Metal
Amorphous metal is a variety of alloys that are non-crystalline or glassy. These are being used to create high efficiency transformers. The materials can be highly responsive to magnetic fields for low hysteresis losses and they can also have lower conductivity to reduce eddy current losses. China is currently making wide spread industrial and power grid usage of these transformers for new installations.
