Vicalloy is a family of cobalt-iron-vanadium wrought ferromagnetic

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. Unlike chemical compounds with metallic bases, an alloy will retain all the properties of a metal in the resulting material, such as electrical conductivity, ductilit ...

s which have high

coercivity Coercivity, also called the magnetic coercivity, coercive field or coercive force, is a measure of the ability of a ferromagnetic material to withstand an external magnetic field without becoming demagnetized. Coercivity is usually measured in ...

and are used to make permanent magnets and other magnetic components. Vicalloy is precipitation hardened and can be formed by a number of

cold working In metallurgy, cold forming or cold working is any metalworking process in which metal is shaped below its recrystallization temperature, usually at the ambient temperature. Such processes are contrasted with hot working techniques like hot r ...

techniques. It is commonly used in electromechanical device applications, such as Wiegand wires because it shows a large

Wiegand effect The Wiegand effect is a nonlinear magnetic effect, named after its discoverer John R. Wiegand, produced in specially annealed and hardened wire called Wiegand wire. Wiegand wire is low-carbon Vicalloy, a ferromagnetic alloy of cobalt, iron, and ...

. It consists of 52%

cobalt Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, p ...

, 10% vanadium, trace amounts of elements such as carbon and manganese, and balance (~37%)

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

. Its magnetic

maximum energy product In magnetics, the maximum energy product is an important figure-of-merit for the strength of a permanent magnet material. It is often denoted and is typically given in units of either (kilojoules per cubic meter, in SI electromagnetism) or (me ...

is 1 MGOe when cast and as high as 3.5 MGOe when appropriately cold worked. 'Vicalloy' was used in hysteresis motors both in solid and laminated form (for higher frequency applications) by Vactric Ltd and Walter Jones Ltd - neither company still exist- using material produced and processed by Telcon Ltd (now owned by Carpenter Technology Corporation) from about 2008. 'Electrical Times' published an article 'Magnetic Alloys for Hysteresis Motors' by D.R. Driver on 10 August 1967 which includes some magnetic characteristics of Vicalloy and P6 alloy. Work on applications in hysteresis motors was done at Aston University, UK, (the late Nick Capoldi who joined Smiths Industries) and The Electrical Research Association, UK, (Tasker and Bradford), amongst others.

References

Cobalt alloys Ferromagnetic materials Vanadium compounds Iron compounds Magnetic alloys {{Alloy-stub