Mobility would be at a standstill without electric motors and their powerful permanent magnets. These owe their useful magnetic properties to the chemical elements neodymium and dysprosium, which belong to the group of rare earths. Sometimes called critical raw materials, nobody is sure whether the supply of rare earths will hold out in the medium and long term. But ensuring that these raw materials remain available on the world market is far from easy, and prices have been rising steadily for years. One of the factors affecting the expansion of emerging technologies is having these prized resources available in sufficient quantities. This is why Fraunhofer researchers in the »critical rare earths« lighthouse project are working on technologies to process rare earths more efficiently, reuse them or to find suitable substitutes. Cell phones, laptops, electric motors and wind turbines all have one thing in common: manufacturing them is impossible without the use of rare earths. Electric-vehicle motors and wind-turbine generators in particular require powerful permanent magnets that contain rare earths such as neodymium and dysprosium. What makes these elements so sought after are the outstanding, hard-magnetic properties of the intermetallic bonds they can form with ferromagnetic elements such as iron or cobalt. The
The post Fraunhofer project aims to halve demand for heavy rare earths has been published on Technology Org.
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