Iron Nitride magnets, maybe better than neo's

spinningmagnets

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There's a new development in magnets, and I will post anything I find in this thread.

Iron Nitride magnets / Fe16N2

No rare-Earth elements, cannot be restricted by China

Stronger than Neodymium per volume

Should cost less to produce than neo's

Environment-friendly raw materials,

Temp range <150C

"...Giant saturation magnetic flux density (2.9 T)..."

"...Its coercivity temperature coefficient (~ 0.4 Oe/°C) in the range of 27–152 °C is two
orders of magnitude lower than that of commercial NdFeB magnets (e.g. N40 ~ −81.9 Oe/K)..."

"...The theoretical magnetic energy product for this iron nitride (Fe16N2) magnet is 130 mega gauss Oersteds, which is more than twice the maximum reported magnet energy product for a rare-earth neodymium magnet...."
 
Wow.. didn't think neodymium could be beat so handily.. got any links to read more about these?
 
https://www.emobility-engineering.com/clean-earth-iron-nitride-magnets/

...The neodymium used in the most popular rare earth magnets (NdFeB, for example) costs about $120 per kilo, while the iron and nitrogen used in Niron magnets are tens of cents per kilo...

Niron has partnered for the development of EV drivetrains, starting with a demonstrator for the Chevrolet Bolt...“You end up with a motor certified at 10% smaller and lighter, with less steel and copper and 15-30% less magnet material because of the higher flux,” Blackburn says. “You get somewhere between two-and-a-half and three times as much power per dollar of magnet cost.”

Funded in part by the US Department of Energy, the Chevrolet Bolt drivetrain demonstrator will use Niron’s second-generation magnet material, and should be ready by the end of 2023

...One apparent disadvantage of iron nitride magnets is that their coercivity is less than that of neodymium. Coercivity is a measure of the magnet’s ability to resist having the polarity of its field flipped when exposed to a strong opposing field...We think the maximum possible coercivity is between 4000 and 5000 oersteds, compared with around 12,000 oersteds or more for neodymium. However, their (Neodymium's) coercivity drops off as temperature rises, so at typical operating temperatures we are pretty competitive...
 
yah reel eyes, had you not banished LockH he would have done the heavy lifting in keeping da schmeer updated on shit like this.
John in CR said:
Commercial by 2023???? Anything more than 3 years out is just vaporware as far as I'm concerned. By 2023 there will obviously be multiple non-rare earth solutions and/or rare won't be quite so rare with plenty of development to harvest known deposits that aren't in China. The whole EV scene will be unrecognizable in 12 years.

called it! :pancake:
 
LoL.

Guilty of feeding motors the right amount of current.

I actually see this magnet being an epic game changer for EVs.
Super excited to get my hands on a sample to quantify material performance.
 
spinningmagnets said:
https://www.emobility-engineering.com/clean-earth-iron-nitride-magnets/

...The neodymium used in the most popular rare earth magnets (NdFeB, for example) costs about $120 per kilo, while the iron and nitrogen used in Niron magnets are tens of cents per kilo...

Silicon costs literally nothing, but for some reason Intel i9 will punch a sizeable hole in your wallet!

Two kilogramms of titanum costs only about 100$ more than two kgs of steel, but good luck finding a titanium bike frame with 100$ markup.
..etc

Still, it is good to have options, and when it comes to CPU analogy Pentium II now also cost nothing :). I suspect it will be awhile before we'll be seeing them in ebikes, though.
 
Your point is well taken. That being said, it's true that silicon is very common in the form of sand. However, microchips and solar panels require extremely pure silicon. The processing of silicon is the expense.

I am still gathering information, but out of the various problems facing the mass adoption of FeN magnets, the production process is already cheap, and likely to become cheaper.
 
spinningmagnets said:
Your point is well taken. That being said, it's true that silicon is very common in the form of sand. However, microchips and solar panels require extremely pure silicon.

The processing of silicon is the expense. I am still gathering information, but out of the various problems facing the mass adoption of FeN magnets, the production process is already cheap, and likely to become cheaper.

Well, if something is well-known (and as far as I understand this property was known for a long time, 12 years I think), but not unversally adopted even given 'volatile' status of rare earths (which is also not exactly a recent developement...), than there is something more than meets the eye.
I mean, carbon is also damn plentiful (we have too much of the stuff in atmosphere for our own good, in fact), but carbon nanotubes still cost like 10 times cocaine by weight :)

However, if a new low-cost method was recently discovered and is being commercialized - than it is pretty cool.
 
"Switched Reluctance" motors do not require permanent magnets. I've been told that one of the Tesla AWD models uses a switched reluctance motor on the front, and apparently they seem to be working out quite well.
 
Switched reluctance, even in the clever horse-shoe short path flux linking designs are awesome, but a rotor weight penalty. They are also super inconvenient to the point of not making sense to do in outrunner configurations.

Any PM material that gives you more rotor surface flux is going to let outrunners and inrunners develop higher torque density.

I also do expect to see it in ebikes and scoots. Buying the magnets is the most costly part of making hubmotors. It's the most costly part of motorcycle motors and aircraft brushless motors and more.

If you could swap to a material that performed better for the same cost, it would still be done rapidly. If you could make a swap that eliminated costs and improved performance, it's going to be in a lot of products (any that want to stay relevant).

I've seen plenty of lab hype media releases that actually have nothing behind them but lies and BS, I realize this could be another. I really want this to be genuine though, and I'm hunting down any material samples I can validate.
 
Toorbough ULL-Zeveigh said:
liveforphysics said:
I actually see this magnet being an epic game changer for EVs.
Super excited to get my hands on a sample to quantify material performance.

what changed your mind?
or have you??

liveforphysics said:
Magnets won't be a part of mature EVs.

Did- Did you bookmark his comment JUST in case, in the future, you could get an "own" on him?

Boi
 
He isn't hassling me any, I love him and his awesome memory.

Switched reluctance is great for many uses.

No replacement for PMs when torque density matters most though.
 
Think I'm with LFP on the chance of this being real. I really sincerely hope it's real, but the properties of FexN were known about in the 70s... They had even more motivation to use it then and heavily research it because of the lack of neodydliums... On a crate of beer scale bet, I'm going with it being another solar roadways. I really want to lose that bet though.

Wish I could get hold of a meaningful SRM motor to try to code an algorithm for. Those things are very real and very useful for most traction applications. Just not light ones.
 
mxlemming said:
Think I'm with LFP on the chance of this being real. I really sincerely hope it's real, but the properties of FexN were known about in the 70s... They had even more motivation to use it then and heavily research it because of the lack of neodydliums... On a crate of beer scale bet, I'm going with it being another solar roadways. I really want to lose that bet though.

Wish I could get hold of a meaningful SRM motor to try to code an algorithm for. Those things are very real and very useful for most traction applications. Just not light ones.
So far it seems like for motors where the magnets can be cooled, this has the opportunities to really shake things up. Ebikes possibly with statorade-like additives, but for car motors where oil or water cooling are the norm? Cheaper, easier to produce an more Eco-friendly could be major, especially if a country can set up a factory that can supply many different sizes.
 
Although PM motors (of all sizes) are a huge global market, one of the most detailed articles I read on FeN magnets was from the speaker industry. Which is interesting, because the earliest endless-sphere mention of ferro fluid was a suggestion by Fechter, based on it's use in...speakers...

edit: this suggests that they will definitely be mass-produced, which typically leads to unexpected improvements. Once lab techs start getting funding to experiment with the "recipe", then its temp range and coercivity (which are not bad) are likely to improve.
 
I agree Spinning, it would let some very low mass high performance drivers to be made.
Blessings for stronger magnets.
 
Would Silicon Carbide mosfets be a good match? :)
 
Silicon carbide transistors are good for very high voltages. Not so good at normal ebike voltages.
 
This is a surprisingly informative post about magnets and iron nitride,
https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magnets-without-the-rare-earth-elements/
It's not a typical hackaday article.
 
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