Magnetic material and coil component employing same

A coil component having a magnetic material and a coil formed on a surface of or inside the magnetic material, said magnetic material constituted by a sintered grain compact formed by compacting and heating multiple soft magnetic alloy grains, referred to as metal grains, containing Fe and a metal element that oxidizes more easily than Fe;

• wherein individual metal grains have oxide film formed substantially all around the metal grains, said oxide film consisting of oxide of the metal grains;
• wherein the metal grains are bonded together only by two types of bonding consisting of oxide-to-oxide bonding where oxide films formed around adjacent metal grains are bonded together, and metal-to-metal bonding where metals of adjacent metal grains are bonded together without intervening oxide films and the adjacent metal grains have a same phase as well as bonding points”;
• and
• wherein an apparent density of the grain compact as expressed by M/VP is 5.2 g/cm3 or more but 7.0 g/cm3 or less, where M represents a mass of the grain compact sample, while VP represents a volume of the grain compact as measured by a gas replacement method, said grain compact having a higher magnetic permeability as compared with a magnetic permeability of a grain compact having the same apparent density and using the same metal grains but bonded by resin.