If you tear into old TVs or recording equipment, you may see shields made from some exotic-looking metal. Old timers will tell you it’s called mu metal, and its purpose is to — sort of — shield things from magnetic fields. The qualification is important. Unlike a conductive RF shield, mu metal doesn’t really stop a magnetic field. Instead, it gives magnetic flux an easier path to follow around whatever you’re trying to protect.
What’s In The Metal?
Mu metal belongs to a family of soft magnetic nickel-iron alloys. A typical modern formulation is about 80% nickel and 15% iron, with molybdenum and a few other elements making up most of the remainder. What makes it useful is its extremely high magnetic permeability. Commercial material can have relative permeability around 100,000 or more, and some specialty alloys can reach even higher.
You can think about reluctance as the magnetic equivalent of resistance. Put a high-permeability shell around something sensitive, and magnetic flux would much rather travel through the shell than through the space inside it, just like current tends to take the path of least resistance.
This works particularly well for DC and low-frequency fields, exactly where your usual copper or aluminum EMI shield isn’t much help.
