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Material Design, Processing, And Engineering Requirements For Magnetic Shape Memory Devices, Andrew Armstrong

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

For magnetic shape memory (MSM) alloys, a magnetic field stimulates a shape change. We use the shape change to build devices such as micro-actuators, sensors, and microfluidic pumps. Currently, (as a novel technology,) devices suffer from some material and magnetic driver shortcomings. Here we address the issues related to operating temperature, repeatability, failure, and magnetic driver development. To increase the operating temperature of the MSM material, we alloyed Fe and Cu to Ni-Mn-Ga. We showed that the element-specific contribution to the valence electron density as parameter systematically determines the effect of each element on the variation of the martensite transformation …