What is the Rare Earth magnets?
What is the Rare Earth magnets?
Rare Earths metals are a group of seventeen elements in the periodic table that consist of the 15 kinds of lanthanides, Scandium and Yttrium.
Ferrofluid on glass, with a rare earth magnet underneath Rare-earth magnets are strong permanent magnets made from alloys of rare earth elements. Developed in the 1970s and 1980s, rare-earth magnets are the strongest type of permanent magnets made, producing significantly stronger magnetic fields than other types such as ferrite or alnico magnets. The magnetic field typically produced by rare earth magnets can exceed 1.4 teslas, whereas ferrite or alnico magnets typically exhibit fields of 0.5 to 1 tesla.
The development of rare earth magnets began around 1966, when K. J. Strnat and G. Hoffer of the US Air Force Materials Laboratory discovered that an alloy of yttrium and cobalt, YCo5, had by far the largest magnetic anisotropy constant of any material then known. The term "rare earth" can be misleading, as these metals are not particularly rare or precious; they are about as abundant as tin or lead.However rare earth ores are unevenly distributed, currently China is producing 97% of the rare-earth used in Global market, focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Rare Earth Permanent Magnet in each application, from the above, it is easy to see that rare earth magnet Made IN China on top In recent decades.
Due to various reasons China has been reducing magnet export quotas, increasing duties and taxes, and holding production quantities at a level that creates a shortage for the world, This has caused the costs of rare-earth elements to increase by about 10-fold in a period of a year, and also puts significant pressure for the world to find an alternate source.
Types of rare earth magnet: SmCo and NdFeB
Samarium cobalt
Samarium cobalt magnets (chemical formula: SmCo5), the first family of rare earth magnets invented, are less used than neodymium magnets because of their higher cost and lower magnetic field strength. However, samarium–cobalt has a higher Curie temperature, creating a niche for these magnets in applications where high field strength is needed at high operating temperatures. They are highly resistant to oxidation, but sintered samarium cobalt magnets are brittle and prone to chipping and cracking and may fracture when subjected to thermal shock.
Neodymium magnet
Neodymium magnet with nickel plating mostly, invented in the 1980s, are the strongest and most affordable type of rare-earth magnet. They are made of an alloy of neodymium, iron, and boron (Nd2Fe14B), sometimes abbreviated as NIB or NdFeB.Neodymium magnets are used in numerous applications requiring strong, compact permanent magnets, such as electric motors for cordless tools, hard disk drives, magnetic holddowns, and jewelry clasps. They have the highest magnetic field strength and have a higher coercivity (which makes them magnetically stable), but they have a lower Curie temperature and are more vulnerable to oxidation than samarium–cobalt magnets. Corrosion can cause unprotected magnets to spall off a surface layer or to crumble into a powder. Use of protective surface treatments such as gold, nickel, zinc, and tin plating and epoxy-resin coating can provide corrosion protection.
Originally, the high cost of these magnets limited their use to applications requiring compactness together with high field strength. Both the raw materials and the patent licenses were expensive. However, since the 1990s, NdFeB magnets have become steadily less expensive, and the low cost has inspired new uses such as magnetic construction toys.
Explanation of strength about rare earth magnet
The rare-earth (lanthanide) elements are metals that are ferromagnetic, meaning that like iron they can be magnetized to become permanent magnets, but their Curie temperatures (the temperature above which their ferromagnetism disappears) are below room temperature, so in pure form their magnetism only appears at low temperatures. However, they form compounds with the transition metals such as iron, nickel, and cobalt, and some of these compounds have Curie temperatures well above room temperature. Rare earth magnets are made from these compounds.
The greater strength of rare earth magnets is mostly due to two factors. First, their crystalline structures have very high magnetic anisotropy. This means that a crystal of the material preferentially magnetizes along a specific crystal axis but is very difficult to magnetize in other directions. Like other magnets, rare earth magnets are composed of microcrystalline grains, which are aligned in a powerful magnetic field during manufacture, so their magnetic axes all point in the same direction. The resistance of the crystal lattice to turning its direction of magnetization gives these compounds a very high magnetic coercivity (resistance to being demagnetized).
Second, atoms of rare earth elements can have high magnetic moments because their orbital electron structure contains many unpaired electrons, in contrast to other elements, in which almost all of the electrons exist in pairs with opposite spins, so their magnetic fields cancel out. This is a consequence of incomplete filling of the f-shell, which can contain up to 7 unpaired electrons. In a magnet it is the unpaired electrons, aligned so they spin in the same direction, which generate the magnetic field. This gives the materials high remanence (saturation magnetization Js). The maximal energy density BHmax is proportional to Js2, so these materials have the potential for storing large amounts of magnetic energy. The magnetic energy product BHmax of neodymium magnets is about 18 times greater than "ordinary" magnets by volume. This allows rare earth magnets to be smaller than other magnets with the same field strength.rare earth magnets can easily lift thousands of times their own weight.
Magnetic properties(Grade)
Some important properties used to compare permanent magnets are: remanence (Br), which measures the strength of the magnetic field; coercivity (Hci), the material's resistance to becoming demagnetized; energy product (BHmax), the density of magnetic energy; and Curie temperature (TC), the temperature at which the material loses its magnetism. Rare earth magnets have higher remanence, much higher coercivity and energy product, but (for neodymium) lower Curie temperature than other types. The table below compares the magnetic performance of the two types of rare-earth magnets, neodymium (Nd2Fe14B) and samarium cobalt (SmCo5), with other types of permanent magnets.
Applications of rare earth magnet
Since their prices became competitive in the 1990s, neodymium magnets have been replacing Ferrite and Alnico magnets in the many applications in modern technology requiring powerful magnets. Their greater strength allows smaller and lighter magnets to be used for a given application.
Common applications of rare earth magnets include:
high performance AC servo motors
permanent magnet motors in cordless tools
wind turbine generators
Magnetic thrapy and medical instruments
Pot magnet for door locks,car,tools
speakers/headphones
computer hard disk drives
bicycle dynamos
MRI scanners
fishing reel brakes
traction motors and integrated starter generators in hybrid and electric vehicles
mechanically powered flashlights, employing rare earth magnets for generating electricity in a shaking motion or rotating (hand-crank-powered) motion
industrial uses such as maintaining product purity, equipment protection, and quality control
capture of fine metallic particles in lubricating oils (crankcases of internal combustion engines, also gearboxes and differentials), so as to keep said particles out of circulation, thereby rendering them unable to cause abrasive wear of moving machine parts
Other applications of rare earth magnets include:
Neodymium magnet toys
Electric guitar pickups
Electrodynamic bearings
Linear motors (used in mag-lev trains, etc)
Stop motion animation: as tie-downs when the use of traditional screw and nut tie-downs is impractical.
Diamagnetic levitation experimentation, the study of magnetic field dynamics and superconductor levitation.
Launched roller coaster technology found on roller coaster and other thrill rides.
small LEDs attached to a button cell battery and a small rare earth magnet, used as a form of non-destructive graffiti and temporary public art.
Miniature figures, for which rare-earth magnets have gained popularity in the miniatures gaming community for their small size and relative strength assisting in basing and swapping weapons between models.