The researchers were able to design and develop the magnet in three months, 200 times faster than conventional approaches.
The rare-earth-free permanent magnet being created Neodymium Magnets N55
London-headquartered , working in collaboration with the Henry Royce Institute and The University of Sheffield in the UK, has designed and developed MagNex, a novel permanent magnet made without using rare-earth elements. The company’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform powered the design of the magnet.
Permanent magnets are everywhere. From the rotors in wind turbines to drones flying in the air, advanced robotics and even emission-less electric vehicles (EVs) depend on them. With countries looking to switch from fossil-fuel vehicles to EVs, the demand for permanent magnets is expected to soar by the end of the decade and far outstrip the supply.
These magnets are made using rare Earth minerals such as neodymium and dysprosium, which, as the name suggests, are rare and extremely vulnerable to supply chain issues.
Materials Nexus aims to address such challenges in industrial production by designing novel materials that can replace existing materials or reduce emissions from processes to net zero.
Scientists are well aware that without discoveries of new materials, future developments in clean energy would be delayed. However, the conventional model of material discovery relies on a trial-and-error approach, which is resource-intensive and very slow.
Material Nexus aims to solve this problem by turning the powerful AI models that can help design and test new materials.
“The platform, rapidly and systematically, searches through the periodic table for elemental combinations that have the desired material properties,” explained Jonathan Bean, CEO and co-founder at Materials Nexus in an email to Interesting Engineering.
“All of our data is generated in-house through quantum mechanic calculations; this means our data is more accurate and extensive than experimental data sets. This data is then fed through our machine learning algorithms and the formula is modelled and optimized,” Bean added.
The team tested their technology on developing rare-earth free, permanent magnets and analyzed over 100 million compositions of candidate materials that help deliver a new type of permanent magnet.
After three months of design and testing efforts, the researchers produced MagNex at just 20 percent of the material cost, but 200 times faster than what it would have taken using the conventional approach, a press release said.
“We’re excited that our first interaction with Materials Nexus has yielded such a hugely positive outcome,” said Iain Todd, Professor of Metallurgy and Materials Processing at the University of Sheffield. “The combination of Materials Nexus’s approach of using AI for materials discovery and the world-class facilities we have for manufacturing advanced alloys in the Henry Royce Institute here at Sheffield has allowed a novel magnetic material to be developed with breathtaking speed.
An additional advantage delivered using this approach was a 70 percent reduction in material carbon emissions compared to rare-earth material magnets available today.
“AI-powered materials design will impact not only magnetics but also the entire field of materials science – we have now identified a scalable method for designing new materials for all kinds of industrial needs,” Bean said in the press release in the press release.
“The material search for MagNex took three months, as we grow our data set and capabilities this will become faster,” Bean told IE in the email.
“Our platform has already attracted widespread interest for various products with applications that include semiconductors, catalysts, and coatings. I look forward to seeing the role it will play in supporting market demand for the creation of novel materials to help address increasingly pressing supply chain and environmental issues,” Bean added.
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Neodymium Magnets Round Ameya Paleja Ameya is a science writer based in Hyderabad, India. A Molecular Biologist at heart, he traded the micropipette to write about science during the pandemic and does not want to go back. He likes to write about genetics, microbes, technology, and public policy.