All articles tagged with #permanent magnets
Despite a deal between the US and China to ease restrictions, China continues to limit raw rare earth materials to the US, hindering America's efforts to develop its own rare earth industry, especially for manufacturing permanent magnets used in various technologies.
Physicists and engineers at Princeton University have built a twisting fusion reactor called a stellarator, named MUSE, using permanent magnets, which offers a potentially cost-effective method for constructing powerful machines. This new technique allows for quick testing of plasma confinement ideas and easy device construction. The use of permanent magnets eliminates the need for electric current to generate magnetic fields, making it easier for scientists to replicate experimental setups and perform high-temperature experiments, bringing us closer to the goal of usable and scalable fusion energy.
Researchers at Ames National Laboratory have developed a machine learning model that predicts the Curie temperature of new material combinations, a crucial factor in discovering critical-element-free permanent magnet materials. By training the model using experimental data and theoretical modeling, the team aims to design new magnetic materials with reduced reliance on critical materials like cobalt and rare earth elements. This approach saves time and resources compared to traditional experimentation-based methods. The successful prediction of Curie temperatures in material candidates represents an important step towards creating high-performance, sustainable permanent magnets for various technological applications.
Niron, a Minneapolis-based startup, is developing a process to create permanent magnets without using rare-earth materials from China, which pose a national security risk. The demand for permanent magnets, used in everything from electric vehicles to wind turbines to consumer electronics, far outstrips the supply and relies on materials from China. Niron's iron-nitride magnets can already do the job in many cases and it's continuing to improve the technology. The company has raised more than $100 million and plans to open a full-scale production facility within the next three or four years.