Additive manufacturing of rare-earth-free permanent magnets

Research question

The overall scientific question is to understand the process-structure property relationships controlling the texture, anisotropy and magnetic properties of AM-built magnetic materials. The research will focus on achieving directed solidification during AM and developing a process to manipulate phase transitions under applied external stimuli to enhance the resulting anisotropy. The structural transition from the high-temperature polymorph to the ferromagnetic low temperature phase in the model system (MnAl) is of critical importance for the resulting magnetic properties, and this will be studied using state-of-the-art scattering methods at large-scale research infrastructures.

Sustainability aspects

The search for new magnetic materials is driven both by scientific interest as well as by technological and economical needs as e.g. wind generators alone are estimated to have the potential to increase the global rare-earth-element demand by 25% per year. Today’s high-performance rare-earth magnets are both crucial for the transition from fossil- to a renewable energy society but also polluting as the mining and extraction is difficult. By pivoting to more abundant elements like Mn and Al (available in Europe, not considered as critical raw materials) this issue can be essentially resolved for most industrial applications.