THE magnetsmagnets permanent components are an essential component in many technologies, such as electric vehicles, wind turbineswind turbines, robots and drones. However, these magnets are made up of rare earthrare earth as the neodymiumneodymium and the dysprosiumdysprosium. Demand is explosive and is expected to increase tenfold by 2030, which risks leading to shortages.
The British company Materials Nexus has just announced that it has created MagNex, a new permanent magnet made without rare earths. To do this, the firm used artificial intelligence to analyze more than 100 million different compositions. It only took three months to design, create and test MagNex with the help of Henry Royce Institute and the University of Sheffield. This process was two hundred times faster than for the most widely used permanent magnet today, which took several decades to discover and develop.
Ecological and economic advantages
Materials Nexus does not specify the composition of its new permanent magnet. However, MagNex would cost only 20% of the production price compared to a rare earth magnet, and would produce 70% lessbroadcastsbroadcasts of CO2. As pointed out New Atlasthis is not the first permanent magnet without rare earths, since Niron Magnetics was able to create one from ironiron and D’nitrogennitrogenbut after a decade of research it is still not ready for the production of massmass.
The firm indicates that this approach could also be used in other areas, such as semiconductorssemiconductorssupercapacitors, and catalystscatalysts.
