Development of magnetic materials in recent years

Magnetic materials are important functional materials which have wide applications and consist of a wide variety. The development of magnetic materials was extremely rapid during the 1990's, when magnetic alloys of the rare earth-3d iron group, such as rare earth permanent magnets, giant magnetostriction materials, giant magnetocaloric materials, magnetooptic materials, magnetic amorphous materials, and nanocrystalline magnetic materials, appeared one by one. The discovery of giant magnetoresistance led to a new research domain - spintronics. Today it is used in various types of devices such as read-out heads, sensors and magnetic random access memories. An overview of new advances in the development of magnetic materials will be presented.