The thesis defended by researcher Kenny Alvarez begins by outlining some of the challenges faced by the industrial sector, such as the exploitation of natural resources, efficient use of materials and the need to reduce the amount polluting gases emitted and energy consumed by companies. This sets the stage for an additional challenge, which is that soft magnetic materials are being used with greater frequency to manufacture various electronic components that are widely used in sectors like telecommunications, energy, car manufacturing and electronics.

Producing soft magnetic materials is especially difficult when specific structures and products that have complex geometries are required for production needs. Alvarez’s doctoral thesis addresses the above challenges by exploring new materials and proposing new manufacturing processes that employ gas atomization. Gas atomization is a production process that converts a flow of molten metal into small droplets, which then solidify into spherical particles. This process is an attractive solution because high cooling rates are achieved during the process, high production rates are possible, and resulting products have the appropriate characteristics.

The thesis’s results are very interesting for producing via atomization new alloys that have attractive properties and that can be used as a raw material in the production of electronic components, such as transformer cores.