Technical Notes - Magnetic Properties of Manganese-Germanium Alloys

IN a recent investigation of the Mn-Ge system by Zwicker it was reported that two inter-metallic compounds in this system, Mn,Ge, and Mn,Ge,, exhibited ferromagnetic properties. Of these, Mn,Ge, was reported as "strongly magnetic" and Mn,Ge, was said to be "weakly magnetic" but no actual values were given. In a study of magnetic alloys of nonmagnetic elements sponsored by the United States Army Signal Corps at Lehigh University, test bars having the nominal composition of these compounds were prepared by pressing elemental powders and sintering them in a purified helium atmosphere. Magnetic values obtained on these compounds are reported in Tables I and 11. It should be cautioned that the test bars were somewhat porous and that X-ray patterns run on these materials indicated that the homogenization in the samples was not complete, but that in each case the compound reported on was the dominant phase. The (B-H) max and particularly the Br values for pure dense M&Ge, can, therefore, be expected to be somewhat higher than those reported herein, while those for Mn,Ge, may be in error in either direction. Further details on this investigation are available in previous publications.23