Iron Powder Core Vs Ferrite
Making a decision between the two and how much.
Iron powder core vs ferrite. Of each is use is no simple take. Still i want to avoid really bad mistakes like using iron powder when i m building an antenna balun. Let s focus on simple toroids of different sizes as a start because this is what most iron powder cores look like. In order to evaluate the choking characteristics of the red toroids i prepared two chokes by winding 12 coils of rg 58 on a iron powder t200 2 toroid and a ferrite ft240 43 one.
Iron powder cores low permeability are superior to the ferrite material cores for high power inductors for this reason. There is a simple thing to remember that can help you make a decision. Using a vectorial network analyzer i measured the cmrr on both chokes obtaining the following results. The conversion from uh 100 turns.
Note that many other manufacturers quote al as nh t2 for both types of material. Fewer turns will be required by the ferrite type core for a given inductance. Also using type 43 ferrites would allow me to use fewer turns. Dust cores powdered iron metal alloy or ferrite dust are made of ferromagnetic particles mixed with a non magnetic binder.
The al figure for iron powder cores is given as uh 100 turns but for ferrite cores it is quoted as mh 1000 turns. Ferrites for the transformers because i have these ferrite ring cores but i do not have the iron powder toroids. The metals have different aspects to them and as such each react slightly differently. Manufacturer s data for iron powder and ferrite cores are in the data tables and show all the required information.
These types of inductor use ferrite core. When the same voltage drop is applied across a decreased number of turns the flux density will increase accordingly. There s a distributed nonmagnetic gap in the these cores which increases their saturation flux density in comparison to an ungapped core or the same material. Ferrite is a material with high magnetic permeability made from the mixture of iron oxide ferric oxide fe 2 o 3 a small percentage of other metals such as nickel zinc barium etc.
Some other time an iron powder core may be just right and a ferrite core may be a bad idea.