Soft magnetic materials are key to the efficient operation of the next generation of power electronics and electrical machines (motors and generators). Many new materials have been introduced since Michael Faraday’s discovery of magnetic induction, when iron was the only option. However, as wide bandgap semiconductor devices become more common in both power electronics and motor controllers, there is an urgent need to further improve soft magnetic materials. These improvements will be necessary to realize the full potential in efficiency, size, weight, and power of high-frequency power electronics and high–rotational speed electrical machines. Here we provide an introduction to the field of soft magnetic materials and their implementation in power electronics and electrical machines. Additionally, we review the most promising choices available today and describe emerging approaches to create even better soft magnetic materials.

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Bricks, fine pottery, ceramic gears and tiles are among the human-made objects routinely recovered in\ud archaeological documentation. Sites associated with early civilizations can provide thousands of samples\ud from a single excavation. They come in endless varieties according to economic and social circumstances\ud and, as debris can last almost forever, provide important clues about the past behaviours in human\ud societies. Any information about the provenance of ceramics is highly valuable in archaeological analysis.\ud In the case of Roman brick-making, the provenance and manufacture of clayey materials are usually\ud interpreted only by studying stamps imprinted on the artefacts, when available. In this paper, the making\ud of bricks, tiles and other ceramics for building purposes is investigated, in relation to the possible sources\ud of raw materials used for the industry. The major questions to be solved relate to the sites from where the\ud Romans collected the raw materials, the technologies they applied to make bricks and other clayey\ud building materials, and how far have they transported raw resources and final products e i.e. mainly\ud bricks and tiles e after furnace treatments, considering that a crucial point was the nearby availability of\ud timber, water, and sandy soils without stones. Some achievements to classify artefacts with identical\ud provenance have been obtained, using the structural transformations induced in the material by thermal\ud treatments of pottery. Comparisons have been made of the trace elements chemical composition in ICPMS\ud and some physical properties, including magnetic, VSM hysteresis loops, and mineralogical features\ud with XRD and IR analysis, have been identified as proxies to elucidate the possible provenance of rough\ud materials, and appreciate the technologies used by the Roman brick-making industry