Unfortunately, there are already many years since iron nitride permanent magnets have been promised, but still no commercial products using them are in sight.
There are no doubts about the magnetic properties of iron nitride, but it appears that either it is very difficult to reproduce the conditions when the desired crystal structure is formed, or it is very difficult to stabilize the crystal structure to ensure an adequate lifetime, or both.
Like for too many other promising new products, some startup is formed, which claims to be able to commercialize the new technology, which is secured by a patent portfolio, and they explain with plenty of details the great advantages of their future products.
Nevertheless, they do not say a single a word about the obstacles that, unless overcome, will completely prevent the production of their planned commercial products. Moreover, they usually still do not have the slightest idea about how to overcome those obstacles, they just hope that they will eventually find a way.
In most cases that startup ends in a failure and no new products appear, even if the world might in fact be full of people who would have known how to overcome those obstacles, except that the startup has never shared their problems, hoping that by solving them alone they would not need to share the future profits that they are expecting.
Those who have the initial good ideas about a new technology only seldom are also able to solve all the problems that appear on the way towards a manufacturable product.
Lots of green eco verbiage and mentions of funders. No products, no samples.
Researchers have been beating on this problem since at least 2003.[1] Someone may crack this problem, but the hype to results ratio is large here.
Rare earths aren't really scarce. There's a boom and bust cycle.
Recent history: Biggest producer was in California. Low-cost rare earths from China resulted in shutdown of Mountain Pass CA mine. Prices raised by China producers. Major freak out in magnet industry. Mountain Pass mine restarted. China drops prices. Rare earth glut around 2015. Mountain Pass mine shut down again. Rare earth supply looking uncertain and rare earths demand increases. Mountain Pass mine started up again. Rare earth mines starting up in Australia. Processing plant in US starts up this quarter. More processing plants being built in US, Canada, Australia. Major auto industry customers now making long term deals with suppliers to get some stability. Push by DoD to get secure US supply.
It's not just rare earths... lots of minerals (most glamorously, gold) are this way. There are mines that are profitable to operate if the mineral is selling for $x per kilogram (or gram, or tonne), but are not profitable to operate if it's selling for $x-1 per unit (or any other figure less than x). Shutting mines down and (sometimes) starting them back up based on economic reasons has been going on for centuries.
Yes, here's a good discussion on some of the ways this may be achieved. Iron Nitride is definitely one option, but several other possibilities are discussed.
I'm patiently waiting for Niron Magnetics[1] to deliver product. The company was discussed here in a thread 5 months ago[2] when this article first came out.
> Not in the article: iron and urea are commonly available without geopolitical worries
Article actually says (well implies) that
> It’s not that rare earth elements like neodymium are all that rare geologically; rather, deposits are unevenly distributed, making it easy for the metals to become pawns in a neverending geopolitical chess game.
I inferred that what they meant was that the price and supply of iron and urea are unlikely to be greatly impacted by political or capitalistic issues, since they are so abundant.
Admittedly, price swings of several percent are easily imaginable, but for now we're making 280-300 kilotons of rare earth magnets every year.
A ton of urea is $300-$500, a ton of iron is $100-$150.
I don't know what the ratios are or processing fees or anything else, but if it took 1 ton of each to offset 1 ton of rare earth magnets then raw materials cost of replacement for the entire world's rare earth magnet supply would be less than $200 million dollars each year.
Not a lot that that can sway in any direction, especially when compared to Neodymiums' ~$2/oz price (or ~$77,000/ton)
Considering that Neodymium is 29% – 32% of a rare earth magnet, that means we spend $2.7-$6.9 billion/year on raw neodymium, so if this were the end of things we could expect a significant decrease in the cost of electric motors and other magnets at this level.
There are no doubts about the magnetic properties of iron nitride, but it appears that either it is very difficult to reproduce the conditions when the desired crystal structure is formed, or it is very difficult to stabilize the crystal structure to ensure an adequate lifetime, or both.
Like for too many other promising new products, some startup is formed, which claims to be able to commercialize the new technology, which is secured by a patent portfolio, and they explain with plenty of details the great advantages of their future products.
Nevertheless, they do not say a single a word about the obstacles that, unless overcome, will completely prevent the production of their planned commercial products. Moreover, they usually still do not have the slightest idea about how to overcome those obstacles, they just hope that they will eventually find a way.
In most cases that startup ends in a failure and no new products appear, even if the world might in fact be full of people who would have known how to overcome those obstacles, except that the startup has never shared their problems, hoping that by solving them alone they would not need to share the future profits that they are expecting.
Those who have the initial good ideas about a new technology only seldom are also able to solve all the problems that appear on the way towards a manufacturable product.