<story><title>Toyota develops first neodymium-reduced, heat-resistant magnet for motors</title><url>http://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/02/20180220-nd.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>philipkglass</author><text>The headline is about the reduced neodymium content but the most interesting part of the development is good high-temperature performance without requiring any terbium or dysprosium. Additions of those expensive, almost-exclusively-China-produced rare earth elements have been how neodymium magnets are made suitable for high-power, high-temperature applications in motors and generators. Neodymium, cerium, and lanthanum are more common rare earth elements that have more good mineral resources outside China.&lt;p&gt;Most wind turbines use electromagnets in their generators, plus gearing systems. So-called &amp;quot;direct drive&amp;quot; turbines use high strength permanent magnets and can have longer lifetimes since the gearbox is the fastest-degrading part of conventional turbines. But turbines with permanent magnet generators have been only a minority of the market, in part because affordable and assured supplies of key heavy rare earth elements are not available outside China. (Goldwind, the only wind turbine manufacturer presently with an all-direct-drive lineup, is Chinese.) Powerful magnets with less need for rare materials can improve wind turbines to charge EVs as well as motors to move them.</text></comment>
<story><title>Toyota develops first neodymium-reduced, heat-resistant magnet for motors</title><url>http://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/02/20180220-nd.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Hextinium</author><text>I am very curious how they create grains of the cerium and then coat them with neodymium to then fuse them together.
I theorize that they first alloy the cerium and lanthanum together and then grind it to a correct particle size. Then they negatively electrically charge the rare earth particles and bond neodymium to it with vapor deposition but I don&amp;#x27;t know it that is possible at that scale. 
They would then press the particles together and heat them up so that they fuse but don&amp;#x27;t liquify.
All of this looks very very cool I just have no concept for how it would actually happen.</text></comment>