Chasing the Rare-Earth Free Permanent Magnet Seminar and Q&A

Professor John Michael Coey is a world leader in magnetic material research with 50+ years of experience in the field. His work has led to numerous honours, such as Fellowship to the Royal Society, the Charless Chree Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Irish Academy and the Max Born Medal and Prize. His book, ‘Magnetism and Magnetic Materials’ is highly recommended by many in the field and his work has had over 16,000 citations in the past 5 years. One area of his work that he will be speaking to us on will be the hunt for rare-earth free ferromagnetic materials and the challenges that this endeavour has faced, as well as possible candidate materials going forward.

Talk Abstract

The 2011 rare earth crisis saw the price of neodymium skyrocket from 50 to 550 $/kg, and dysprosium briefly touch 3500 $/kg, Within a couple of years, prices had collapsed to a quarter of these levels, but the shock launched a flurry of activity to search for new, rare-earth free permanent magnets, or at least magnets that needed mimimal amounts of heavy rare earths to achieve a decent high-temperature performance. The research retains some of its momentum ten years later. This talk outlines the physical principles and metallurgical practice that underlie the 20 – 30 year process of optimizing a new permanent magnet material. The slate of candidates is limited and has changed little over the past 30 years. What has improved dramatically is control over the coercivity and loop shape of Nd2Fe14B using little heavy rare earth, and replacing Nd by Ce. Prospects for significantly improving the performance of current rare-earth intermetallics, and prospects of various ‘gap’ magnets will be reviewed. The moral of the story will be drawn.