Outstanding efficiency in energy conversion for electric motors constructed by nanocrystalline soft magnetic alloy “NANOMET®” cores

Abstract

Recently updated nanocrystalline soft magnetic Fe-Co-Si-B-P-Cu alloys “NANOMET®” exhibit high saturation magnetic flux density (Bs > 1.8 T), low coercivity (Hc < 10 A/m) and low core loss (W1.7/50 ∼ 0.4 W/kg) even in a ribbon form with a thickness of up to 40 μm. By utilize excellent magnetic softness, several products such as motors or transformers for electrical appliances are now under developing by industry-academia collaboration. In particular, it is found that a brushless DC motor using NANOMET® core exhibited remarkable improvement in energy consumption. The prototype motor with an outer core diameter of 70 mm and a core thickness of 50 mm was constructed using laminated nano-crystallized NANOMET® ribbons. Core-loss for the constructed motor was improved from 1.4 W to 0.4 W only by replacing the non-oriented Si-steel core with NANOMET® one. The overall motor efficiency is evaluated to be 3% improvement. In this work, the relation between processing and resulting magnetic properties will be presented. In addition, feasibility for commercialization will also be discussed.