Motor Trend is reporting on early production of a new permanent magnet material https://www.motortrend.com/features/niron-magnetics-clean-earth-permanent-magnets-ces-2025/ suitable for replacing the rare-earth magnets used, for example, in electric car motors, as well as loud speakers and many other products.
Invented some time back by university researchers and now in the pilot production stage (with suitably large investors like car companies),
Science has long known that a certain rare phase of iron nitride, known as an alpha-double-prime crystal structure of Fe16N2, holds extremely strong magnetic properties. But when produced by conventional means over the decades, the phase would degrade into more common, less magnetic phases. Then researchers at the University of Minnesota figured out a way to form this magic magnet material on a nano-scale using chemical vapor deposition or liquid phase epitaxy, and then developed a process for compacting and sintering nanoparticles of α″-Fe16N2 into magnets in the sizes and form factors allowing direct replacement of today's rare-earth permanent magnet motors.
Magnetic strength in the magnets used in electric motors is measured in tesla (where 1 tesla = 10,000 Gauss, for those more familiar with the unit used to measure Earth's magnetic pull). Weaker hard ferrite (iron-oxide) permanent magnets typically max out at around 0.35 tesla. The world's strongest permanent magnets made of neodymium measure around 1.4‑1.6 teslas. Niron's Clean Earth iron nitride permanent magnets peg the meter at 2.4 teslas. Niron Clean Earth magnets are also said to lose less magnetism over the typical operating temperature range than today's rare-earth permanent magnets.
Better yet: Niron's entire manufacturing process, from raw ore material to finished magnets, can be produced in a single factory on existing equipment, with 80 percent less CO2 and vastly less water usage, at a price that is currently on par with rare-earth magnets and utterly immune to price volatility due to supply chain and geopolitical forces.
Further icing on the cake: the iron is best sourced from iron salts that are a byproduct of steel manufacturing, with nitrogen sourced from ammonia. Produce that ammonia from air and water in a location that generates surplus solar or wind energy, and you get both clean nitrogen and a source of clean hydrogen that can help power the process.
One less thing to import from China...
For some perspective, here's a page on very high power research magnets (note, these are not permanent magnets as described above), https://new.nsf.gov/science-matters/maglab-makes-magic-magnets
The 100 tesla pulsed magnet at MagLab's Los Alamos site produces the highest nondestructive magnetic field in the world. Higher-field magnets exist but can't withstand a field that high and explode after brief experiments. By pulsing the magnet in bursts that last 15 milliseconds, Los Alamos holds the world record for the highest field ever generated without blowing something up, enabling rare precision measurements.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Thursday January 09, @05:47PM (2 children)
One minor fly in the ointment is the coercivity in produced foils "was recently" a tenth that of neo super magnets and even the most optimistic hand waving was "maybe it'll be half of neo or a tenth of samarium someday in a theoretical model if we're lucky".
The above may have changed, of course.
coercivity can be described with formulas and hysteresis loop graphs and stuff but a crappy analogy is "how hard can you smack it with an opposing field before it gets overwhelmed".
So coercivity is quite irrelevant for something like a desktop size homelab size NMR analyzer unless I do something moronic like try to NMR a strong magnet inside it LOL in which case it might totally F up my magnets.
However its a bit rougher for something like a motor, as the motor windings will fight the permanent magnet trying to demagnetize it.
You'll sometimes read this as "magnetically soft" vs "magnetically hard".
These nitride magnets used to recently be famous for being very strong but relatively soft.
The engineering range of numbers is very small compared to how we can control and use and measure something like time or current. A really decent super soft transformer core might be under a thousandth of a kA/m vs under a thousand-ish kA/m for a decent neo magnet. Samarium magnets kick ass and max out around a couple thousand. These nitride magnets used to be known as about as "tough" magnetically as the cheap alnico magnets probably in your kitchen cabinet doors or maybe on your fridge.
You get used to engineers being able to manipulate currents from femtoamps to megamps but the total engineering range of human civilization for coercivity is only about a million from the softest transformer steel to the toughest permanent magnet ever made; a depressingly narrow range.
Anyway "strong" field is nice and useful for many applications, but "hard to demagnetize" is pretty important for some apps like motors and apparently these nitride magnets just are not all that.
I can't get a straight answer on the Curie temp of these nitride magnets; appears not to be an issue, I've seen google results vaguely around the "dull red" level of temps (like five to seven hundred ish celsius) Its probably a lack of shippable product that prevents serious testing.
Unless something surprising has been reported by technical press as opposed to clickbait press, I donno about placing these magnets in giant high power motors...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by DadaDoofy on Friday January 10, @12:05AM (1 child)
Which version of ChatGPT was this?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 10, @02:36AM
LOL I was thinking the same thing. VLM's very own no doubt.