Improvement of a magnetization method on a small-size superconducting bulk magnet system

A pulsed-filed magnetization (PFM) is an important technique for industrial applications of superconducting bulk magnets, and several advanced PFM methods are proposed to enhance the trapped field. In the well-known IMRA method, the channel through the magnetic flux is formed by the flux flow caused by heat generation when applying the strong pulsed-field, and the magnetic flux is made to penetrate into the bulk through the channel in the following pulse application. On the other hand, large applied field leads to large heat generation, and, therefore, the trapped field is decreased greatly. This paper proposes an effective magnetizing method in which the channel composed of magnetic field is artificially formed by field-cooling (FC) using a permanent magnet and the magnetic flux by PFM is induced to the channel. To confirm the validity of this method, the bulk was magnetized by FC using Nd-Fe-B magnets of the rectangular and the ring shapes, and thereafter, a pulsed-field of 6.2 T was applied. As a result, the trapped field of the bulk magnetized by FC using the ring magnet was increased by about 20-25% as compared with that of the conventional PFM, and, moreover, it was observed that the channel was formed partially by measurement of the magnetic field distribution.