Researchers at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with colleagues in Austria, report that tetrataenite, a 'cosmic magnet' that takes millions of years to develop naturally in meteorites, can potentially be used instead of rare
Researchers at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with colleagues in Austria, report that tetrataenite, a “cosmic magnet” that takes millions of years to develop naturally in meteorites, can potentially be used instead of rare earth materials in magnets.
The sticking point is that China, with it predilection for dominating so many of the manufacturing processes for making electric vehicles, solar panels, and other critical technologies needed to address an overheating planet, controls over 80% of the world market for rare earth elements. One of the most promising alternatives for permanent magnets is tetrataenite, an iron-nickel alloy with an ordered atomic structure. The material forms over millions of years as a meteorite slowly cools. This offers the iron and nickel atoms enough time to order themselves into a particular stacking sequence within the crystalline structure, resulting in a material with magnetic properties similar to those of rare earth magnets.
“For most people, it would have ended there: nothing interesting to see in the dendrites, but when I looked closer, I saw an interesting diffraction pattern indicating an ordered atomic structure,” said first author Dr Yurii Ivanov, who completed the work while at Cambridge and is now based at the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa.
“What was so astonishing was that no special treatment was needed. We just melted the alloy, poured it into a mold, and we had tetrataenite,” says Greer. “The previous view in the field was that you couldn’t get tetrataenite unless you did something extreme, because otherwise, you’d have to wait millions of years for it to form. This result represents a total change in how we think about this material.
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