Recently, the grain boundary diffusion process (GBDP), involving heavy rare-earth elements such as Dy and Tb, has been widely used to enhance the coercivity of Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets. For example, a Dy compound is coated onto the surface of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets, and then the magnets are heat treated. Subsequently, Dy diffuses into the grain boundaries of Nd-Fe-B magnets, forming Dy-Fe-B or Nd-Dy-Fe-B. The dip-coating process is also used widely instead of the GBDP. However, it is quite hard to control the thickness uniformity using dip coating. In this study, first, a DyF₃ paste is fabricated using DyF₃ powder. Subsequently, the fabricated DyF₃ paste is homogeneously coated onto the surface of a Nd-Fe-B sintered magnet. The magnet is then subjected to GBDP to enhance its coercivity. The weight ratio of binder and DyF₃ powder is controlled, and we find that the coercivity enhances with decreasing binder content. In addition, the maximum coercivity is obtained with the paste containing 70 wt% of DyF₃ powder.

We investigate the microstructural and magnetic property changes of DyH₂, Cu + DyH₂, and Al + DyH₂ diffusion-treated NdFeB sintered magnets with the post annealing (PA) temperature. The coercivity of all the diffusiontreated magnets increases with increasing heat treatment temperature except at 910°C, where it decreases slightly. Moreover, at 880°C, the coercivity increases by 3.8 kOe in Cu and 4.7 kOe in Al-mixed DyH₂-coated magnets, whereas this increase is relatively low (3.0 kOe) in the magnet coated with only DyH₂. Both Cu and Al have an almost similar effect on the coercivity improvement, particularly over the heat treatment temperature range of 790-880°C. The diffusivity and diffusion depth of Dy increases in those magnets that are treated with Cu or Al-mixed DyH₂, mainly because of the comparatively easy diffusion path provided by Cu and Al owing to their solubility in the Nd-rich grain boundary phase. The formation of a highly anisotropic (Nd, Dy)₂Fe₁₄B phase layer, which acts as the shell in the core-shell-type structure so as to prevent the reverse domain movement, is the cause of enhanced coercivity of diffusion-treated Nd-Fe-B magnets.