Just at the beginning of June, a consortium of 15 European partners led by the Slovenian Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI) kicked off GREENE, short for SINGLE-GRAIN RE-ENGINEERED Nd-Fe-B PERMANENT MAGNETS, an EU project with a funding of €8 million. Over a four-year period, partners will develop high-energy Nd-Fe-B based magnets, innovatively re-engineering them at the single grain level to minimize the overall Rare Earth (RE) content, thus reducing environmental impact and supply dependencies for these critical raw materials. The project was financed in the framework of the EU Topic Advanced materials for magnets in applications for the New Energies Market, HORIZON-CL4-2023-RESILIENCE-01-37.
GREENE partners aim to push the boundaries of material science by developing Single-Grain Re-Engineered Nd- Fe-B permanent magnets with a new grain-boundary interface, thus allowing for a reduction of REE content. The new GREENE magnets will be more resource-efficient, offering a roughly 20% increase in coercivity, 10% in remanence, and 20% in overall maximum energy product. As a first step, novel grain boundaries and interfaces will be created using micromagnetic simulations and computational thermodynamics. Following an initial testing phase, the technology will then be applied to isolated grains from recycled and fresh streams to develop a new form of Nd-Fe-B magnet. By the end of the project, the magnet manufacturing system will be set up in an actual operational setting.
To achieve this ambitious undertaking, 15 European partners with outstanding expertise in their respective fields have joined forces, including leading material scientists, magnet manufacturers and recyclers, lifecycle analysis experts as well as end user representatives. Several of them have already cooperated in predecessor projects like SUSMAGPRO, INSPIRES and REEsilience. Project is coordinated by Prof. Kristina Žužek from JSI (e-mail: Tina.Zuzek@ijs.si).