What are some non magnetic alloys of iron?

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Answer by minefinder
The magnetic properties of a metal or an alloy are complex, and it is hard to assign metals as being strictly magnetic and others to be strictly non-magnetic. In addition, the terms "magnetic" and "non magnetic" are not very precise.

For a metal (or any other substance) to be magnetic, it must have electron spin. This gives the substance an electronic angular momentum to interact with the magnetic field. Some metals, like the lanthanoids, consistently have unpaired electrons due to the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and so are typically strongly magnetic.


But other metals may be magnetic or not magnetic depending upon what substance they are found. Alloys made of Fe and Ni may become non-magnetic in certain alloys grouped together as "stainless steel". Some substances become "magnetic" in the presence of a magnetic field, but are not magnetic in the absence of a magnetic field. These are called "paramagnetic". Other substances form "permanent" magnets and have their own intrinsic magnetic field. These are called "ferromagnetic" metals.

However other metals have a structure in which some of the electrons point in one direction and another layer of domain point in the opposite direction. These more complex structures are called "antiferromagnetic". A further complication is that the magnetic behavior depends upon the temperature. So at low temperature a substance may have one kind of magnetic properties but at a higher temperature may have another type of magnetic behavior.