Coercivity

If an antiferromagnet is present in the sample, the coercivities measured in increasing and decreasing fields may be unequal as a result of the exchange bias effect.

[citation needed] The coercivity of a material depends on the time scale over which a magnetization curve is measured.

The magnetization of a material measured at an applied reversed field which is nominally smaller than the coercivity may, over a long time scale, slowly relax to zero.

Common dissipative processes in magnetic materials include magnetostriction and domain wall motion.

The saturation remanence and coercivity are figures of merit for hard magnets, although maximum energy product is also commonly quoted.

The 1980s saw the development of rare-earth magnets with high energy products but undesirably low Curie temperatures.