New High Performance Permanent Magnet Material
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Ames Laboratory, Ames, Iowa, have designed a PM alloy for permanent magnets made by metal injection molding (MIM). The new material, which provides good magnetic strength at 392°F, is aimed at making electric drive motors more efficient and less costly for electric cars, fuel-cell automobiles and plug-in hybrids.
Iver Anderson, senior metallurgist, and lab colleagues Bill McCallum and Matthew Kramer have conducted their work as part of the DOE’s vehicle technologies program to develop more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly highway-transportation technologies.
The new alloy replaces pure neodymium with a mixed rare earth material combining neodymium, yttrium, and dysprosium. It offers an improvement over other magnet materials, which tend to lose magnetic energy at fairly modest temperatures, Anderson reports.
The researchers have processed the new alloy into fine spherical powder via gas atomization and are working on perfecting the best mechanical properties for mass production.
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