Project description
Toolbox for new sustainable Fe-rich magnets
Nd-Fe-B magnets are crucial for green mobility and renewable energy but rely on expensive heavy rare earth elements like terbium (Tb) and dysprosium (Dy), with no practical alternatives. SmFe12-based compounds offer stronger magnetic properties without heavy rare earths but struggle with phase instability. The ERC-funded MAG-TOOL project aims to create an advanced toolbox that combines experimental techniques with machine learning algorithms, potentially reducing the number of required experiments. The goal is to develop new sustainable magnets with medium to high performance. The project will initially focus on three elements to predict compounds with desirable phases and will later apply this knowledge to more complex multi-element systems, improving magnetic properties.
Objective
Nd-Fe-B magnets are central to both green mobility and the generation of electricity from renewable resources. But the need to incorporate heavy rare earths like Tb and Dy –highly critical raw materials– to operate these magnets above 100 °C (required for electric vehicles and wind turbines) makes them very costly, environmentally damaging, and with a very fragile value chain. And despite four decades of effort, no practical alternative to Nd-Fe-B has been found.
SmFe12-based compounds have superior intrinsic magnetic properties, actually surpassing those of benchmark Nd-Fe-B and, without the need for additional heavy rare earths. The challenge with SmFe12 is phase instability in the bulk form and creating a microstructure that will convert the large intrinsic anisotropy field into a usable coercivity. What we know so far is that the solution lies in combining multiple alloying elements, each one impacting differently. In Sm(Fe,M,X,Z)12, for example, 20 alloying elements results in around ≈10^8 combinations (“experiments”), if each element varies from 1 to 15 at.% in quinary compositions.
MAG-TOOL will create a cutting-edge toolbox that combines experimental techniques with state-of-the-art machine-learning algorithms, eliminating the need for trial-and-error. This breakthrough approach drastically reduces the number of experiments from a daunting ≈10^8 down to a manageable ≈10^2. MAG-TOOL will achieve that by breaking the multi-element complexity, starting to predict the compounds with useful phases using only three elements. This knowledge will be transferred to multi-element situations and combined with robust experiments to deliver superior magnetic properties in powders and melt-spun ribbons. MAG-TOOL will also include a laser-deposition, additive-manufacturing system for rapidly creating many compositions within the same bulk samples through compositional gradients. The outcome of the project will be the new medium- and high-performance sustainable magnet.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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64289 DARMSTADT
Germany
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