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6mo
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On this page

  • Diving into the Novamag database
    • Calculating Properties from Novamag Data
      • 1. Magnetic Anisotropy Energy (MAE)
      • 2. Magnetic Hardness Parameter (κ)
    • Strain Conditions
      • What They Did
      • Why This Matters
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Diving into the Novamag database

Working on cleaning the data we have available and seeing what we've got for a MAE prediction model. This resource was nice and had all the raw files uploaded so that you can process them yourself and not need to scrape for it.

Database of novel magnetic materials for high-performance permanent magnet development

PDF file

This paper describes the open Novamag database that has been developed for the design of novel Rare-Earth free/lean permanent magnets. The database software technologies, its friendly graphical user interface, advanced search tools and available data are explained in detail. Following the philosophy and standards of Materials Genome Initiative, it contains significant results of novel magnetic phases with high magnetocrystalline anisotropy obtained by three computational high-throughput screening approaches based on a crystal structure prediction method using an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm, tetragonally distortion of cubic phases and tuning known phases by doping.

6mo

http://crono.ubu.es/novamag/

As with NovoMag, this is primarily a DFT generated database of theoretical materials. Additionally, structured were obtained by Adaptive Genetic Algorithm Structure Prediction Methods (USPEX+VASP). I'm not sure of the exact software Novomag used but it was AGA too.

Check out my deep dive into NovoMag:

Diving deeper into the NovoMag database

post

Also known as the Magnetic Materials Database. I came to this database looking for magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy data for permanent magnet design. After scraping the data from the app, which is

6mo

There are about 1600 entries total and around 600 of them have MAE data! There is a small section (20 materials) of micromagnetic simulations with coercivity and Curie temperature data. We can come back to that some other time.

For now, the 600 we have is pretty good sized! These all should come with CIF data so we can really work them in computational environments.

Let's take a look at some example data:

json
{
  "confidential": {
    "value": false
  },
  "name": "NOVAMAG_theory_TUDA_Al1Co1_#123_409",
  "properties": {
    "approach": {
      "value": "theory"
    },
    "summary": {
      "value": "crystal, tetragonal distortion, magnetization, MAE"
    },
    "chemistry": {
      "chemical formula": {
        "value": "Al1Co1"
      },
      "production info": {
        "value": "Imposed tetragonal distortion on cubic phase from Materials Project database"
      }
    },
    "crystal": {
      "compound space group": {
        "value": 123
      },
      "unit cell volume": {
        "value": 23.24754
      },
      "lattice parameters": {
        "value": [2.82549, 2.82549, 2.91198]
      },
      "lattice angles": {
        "value": [90.0, 90.0, 90.0]
      },
      "atomic positions": {
        "value": ["Al1(1a)", 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, "Co1(1d)", 0.5, 0.5, 0.5]
      },
      "crystal info": {
        "value": "1% compressive strain is applied to get the tetragonally distorted structure under the constant volume approximation (unrelaxed crystal structure)"
      }
    },
    "thermodynamics": {
      "unit cell energy": {
        "value": null
      },
      "unit cell formation enthalpy": {
        "value": null
      },
      "energy info": {
        "value": null
      },
      "interatomic potentials info": {
        "value": null
      },
      "magnetic free energy": {
        "value": null
      },
      "magnetic free energy info": {
        "value": null
      }
    },
    "magnetics": {
      "unit cell spin polarization": {
        "value": null
      },
      "atomic spin specie": {
        "value": null
      },
      "saturation magnetization": {
        "value": 0.00983267
      },
      "magnetization temperature": {
        "value": 0.0
      },
      "magnetization info": {
        "value": "software VASP (vasp.5.3.3), k-points mesh 17x17x17, Ecut-off=500 eV, PAW_PBE, Al:PAW_PBE:04Jan2001, Co:PAW_PBE:02Aug2007"
      },
      "magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy": {
        "value": null
      },
      "anisotropy energy type": {
        "value": "uniaxial"
      },
      "magnetocrystalline anisotropy constants": {
        "value": [0.0368301, 0.0]
      },
      "kind of anisotropy": {
        "value": "easy axis"
      },
      "anisotropy info": {
        "value": "software VASP (vasp.5.3.3) with spin-orbit coupling, k-points mesh 17x17x17, Ecut-off=500 eV, PAW_PBE, Al:PAW_PBE:04Jan2001, Co:PAW_PBE:02Aug2007"
      },
      "exchange integrals": {
        "value": null
      },
      "exchange info": {
        "value": null
      },
      "magnetic order": {
        "value": null
      },
      "curie temperature": {
        "value": null
      },
      "curie temperature info": {
        "value": null
      },
      "anisotropy field": {
        "value": null
      },
      "remanence": {
        "value": null
      },
      "coercivity": {
        "value": null
      },
      "energy product": {
        "value": null
      },
      "hysteresis info": {
        "value": null
      },
      "domain wall width": {
        "value": null
      },
      "domain wall info": {
        "value": null
      },
      "exchange stiffness": {
        "value": null
      },
      "exchange stiffness info": {
        "value": null
      }
    },
    "additional information": {
      "authors": {
        "value": ["TUDA"]
      },
      "reference": {
        "value": null
      },
      "comments": {
        "value": "A tetragonal distortion was imposed on cubic material by changing the lattice constant in a brute force way, just to find out how the material would change under strain"
      },
      "attached files": {
        "value": [
          "Al1Co1_#123_409.cif",
          "CONTCAR_Al1Co1_#123_409",
          "Al1Co1_#123_409.png"
        ]
      },
      "attached files info": {
        "value": null
      }
    }
  }
}

There's a lot of good detail, but we'll be focusing on the magnetic section. The data reports the magnetic data of interest like so:

json
"saturation magnetization": {
    "value": 0.00983267
},
"magnetization temperature": {
    "value": 0.0
},
"anisotropy energy type": {
    "value": "uniaxial"
},
"magnetocrystalline anisotropy constants": {
    "value": [0.0368301, 0.0]
},
"kind of anisotropy": {
    "value": "easy axis"
},

Calculating Properties from Novamag Data

1. Magnetic Anisotropy Energy (MAE)

For uniaxial systems in this dataset:

  • MAE = K₁ (in MJ/m³)

  • Given directly as first element of magnetocrystalline_anisotropy_constants

  • Represents energy difference between hard and easy axes

2. Magnetic Hardness Parameter (κ)

Calculate using:

κ = √(K₁/μ₀Ms²)

Where:

  • K₁ = first anisotropy constant in J/m³ (multiply MJ/m³ by 10⁶)

  • μ₀ = 4π × 10⁻⁷ T·m/A

  • Ms = Js/(4π × 10⁻⁷) in A/m, where Js is the given value in Tesla


Strain Conditions

This was really surprising at first, but it makes a lot of sense now that I've learned more about it. In the raw data, we see this comment made for all the data with MAE calculated:

A tetragonal distortion was imposed on cubic material by changing the lattice constant in a brute force way, just to find out how the material would change under strain

At first, I thought this would make all of this data useless as it wasn't true to the material. I'll still need to see how compatible it is with our Novomag data and if we can train a model that merges both datasets.

What They Did

  • Applied 1% compressive strain to all materials

  • Maintained constant volume (material expands perpendicular to compression)

  • Created tetragonal distortion (breaks cubic/hexagonal symmetry)

  • Kept structure unrelaxed (atoms can't move to minimize energy)

Why This Matters

  • Natural cubic materials (Fe, Co, Ni) have zero MAE

  • 1% strain creates artificial but measurable anisotropy

  • Shows which materials are most "magnetically responsive" to strain

The paper mentions how these materials could be good candidates for doping interstitial atoms such as H, B, C, and N and how that can lead to substantial tetragonal distortions -> higher MAE.

See Section 4.2.2, Tetragonally distortion of cubic phases.

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    2 references
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