New Exchange-Coupled Manganese-Based Magnetic Materials - NEXMAG

Project summary

Magnetic materials are important in the production, transmission and use of electrical energy. An increased use of low carbon technologies is necessary to ensure a high living standard. Permanent magnets (PMs), used in a multitude of technological applications, play a very important role in these efforts. However, these PMs contain critical raw materials [rare-earths (REs)] as fundamental constituents and EU does not own the natural resources. NEXMAG project considers as main objective the development of -unprecedented- nanocomposite Manganese-based materials that will result in (BH)max=4.5-15 MGOe through an efficient coupling between two complementary phases: (a) Magnetically hard phases (large anisotropy): MnAl; MnBi. (b) Magnetically soft phases (high saturation magnetisation): metals (Fe, FeCo). These new magnets -constituted by non-critical elements- will allow substitution of RE-PMs in many technological applications therefore contributing to solve the EU dependency of REs.