What’s the Most Powerful Magnet in the World?
What’s the Most Powerful Magnet?
Magnets have played a very important role in our daily lives and we can see magnets everywhere in our house. For example, we can find magnets in the microwave oven, mobile phone, toys, leather bags, and motors. But do you know what’s the most powerful magnet in the world? In this article, let’s take a deeper look into the most powerful magnet on the market today.
Neodymium magnet, also known as NdFeB magnet, is the most powerful type of permanent magnets available to consumers today.
Who found the NdFeB magnet?
In 1982, Masato Sagawa from Sumitomo Special Metals in Japan discovered the neodymium magnet. The magnetic energy product (BHmax) of this magnet is greater than that of a samarium cobalt magnet. Later, Sumitomo Special Metals successfully developed the powder metallurgy process and General Motors successfully developed the melt-spinning process, both of which can produce NdFeB magnets.
What Are the Main Components of NdFeB Magnets?
NdFeB permanent magnet materials are based on the intermetallic compound Nd2Fe14B. Its main components are rare earth elements neodymium (Nd), iron (Fe), and boron (B).
Among them, the rare earth element is mainly neodymium (Nd). In order to obtain different properties, some rare earth metals such as dysprosium (Dy) and praseodymium (Pr) can be used to replace neodymium (Nd). Iron can also be partially replaced by other metals such as cobalt (Co) and aluminum (Al). The boron content is small, but it plays an important role in the formation of tetragonal crystal structure intermetallic compounds, making the compound have high saturation magnetization, high uniaxial anisotropy, and high Curie temperature.
What Are the Applications of NdFeB Magnets?
NdFeB magnets have excellent magnetic properties and are widely used in electronics, electrical machinery, medical equipment, toys, packaging, hardware machinery, aerospace, and other fields. For example, you can find NdFeB magnets in permanent magnet motors, speakers, and magnetic separators, computer disk drives, magnetic resonance imaging equipment, etc.
The Subcategories of the NdFeB Magnets
Based on different manufacturing processes, NdFeB Magnets can be divided into two subcategories, namely sintered NdFeB magnets and bonded NdFeB magnets.
Bonded NdFeB magnets are corrosion-resistant, while sintered NdFeB magnets are easy to corrode and require a coating on their surface. The general coatings are zinc plating, nickel plating, environmentally-friendly zinc plating, environmentally-friendly nickel plating, and nickel-copper-nickel plating, environmentally-friendly nickel-copper-nickel plating, etc.
Besides, bonded NdFeB magnets have magnetism in all directions, while sintered NdFeB magnets are generally divided into axial magnetization and radial magnetization according to the required working surface.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading our article and we hope it can help you to have a better understanding of the neodymium magnet – the most powerful magnet in the world. If you want to know more about NdFeB magnets, we advise you to visit Stanford Magnets for more information.
As a leading magnet supplier across the world, Stanford Magnets has been involved in R&D, manufacturing, and sales of magnets since the 1990s and can provide customers with high-quality rare earth permanent magnetic products like neodymium magnets, and other non-rare earth permanent magnets at a very competitive price.