Behera, Malaya PrasadLv, YifanSingamneni, Sarat2026-03-162026-03-162026-03-11Scientific Reports, ISSN: 2045-2322 (Print); 2045-2322 (Online), Nature Portfolio. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-43131-52045-23222045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10292/20775Additive manufacturing of bonded magnets using polymer extrusion, powder bed fusion, and stereolithography is established, but this paper focuses on the laser powder bed method. Magnetic particles mixed with polymer powders were consolidated into bonded magnets by selective laser sintering. External magnetic fields were applied to align particles during sintering, but with uniform powder compositions and fields, the effects of which were limited to bulk properties. Considering the point-wise material consolidation mechanics, we hypothesise that controlled dispersion of multiple powder materials and localised external magnetic fields in specific orientations and at specific times during sintering can lead to bonded magnets with controlled magnetic heterogeneity. Results from experimental research conducted and reported in this paper have shown this hypothesis to be true. The outcome of this research paves ways towards achieving bonded magnets with controlled placement of different magnetic materials. The as-printed samples exhibit relatively weak polarisation (≈ 1.5-2 mT flux), but magnetisation under external fields (1.5-1.9 T) raises flux values up to 6 mT N / 3 mT S for NdFeB/FeSi and 14 mT N / 6 mT S for NdFeB/FeCo, demonstrating strong amplification of polar strengths. Both NdFeB/FeSi and NdFeB/FeCo samples show 80-100 mT North and 50-100 mT South differential polarities under external fields, with minimal change from as-printed to magnetised states. Even when the external field is reversed, a persistent North-upward remanent tendency confirms an easy-axis alignment induced during laser consolidation.Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Bonded magnetsControlled magnetismLaser sinteringMulti-materialsMulti-polar4014 Manufacturing Engineering40 EngineeringJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1038/s41598-026-43131-5