Rare Earth Free Permanent Magnets

Dear Colleagues,

Permanent magnets (PMs) have become our invisible companions in the last few decades, particularly due to their presence in electrical motors, hybrid and electric vehicles, (aero) generators, transformers, and all sorts of consumer electronics. High-performance magnets are nowadays based on rare-earth (RE) materials, presenting a world-wide strategic resource problem, as the largest explored RE deposits are in China. This has promoted many concerns, as heavy RE prices have considerably increased in the last decade. These are crucial building blocks of the high-performance Nd-Fe-B PMs and have been classified as ‘critical’ in supply risk and importance to clean energy by the USA Department of Energy in 2011. Therefore, a renewed interest in RE-free PMs has since resurfaced.

There are several current strategies to develop new, competitive RE-free PMs. One is to take advantage of the fact that the material with the highest known value of saturation magnetization is permendur, an Fe-Co soft magnetic alloy. Several recent works have focused on increasing the coercivity of Fe-Co type alloys either by distorting the atomic structure by chemical substitution, strain or epitaxy, or by developing composites where the added hard phase pins the soft phase moments at the nano-scale, via the so-called exchange spring magnet effect. In parallel, much work has been done in the search and optimization of single-phase RE-free PMs, through novel synthesis and modification methods. The usefulness of computational techniques to predict and improve on novel, high-performance PMs is highlighted and explored using various methods, including Density Functional Theory, Monte Carlo and micromagnetism simulations.

This is an exciting and very current field of research. It is my pleasure to be the Guest Editor of this Metals Special Issue on the topic of rare earth-free permanent magnets.

Dr. João Amaral
Guest Editor

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• Magnetic Materials
• Permanent Magnets
• Energy Materials
• Sustainability
• Critical Materials