Development of novel permanent magnet designs for electric vehicle motors

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Petrol driven cars will only be permitted for a few more years in many countries, and as a result there is a strong drive to "electrify" the automotive sector. This presents many challenges, an important one of which is to be efficient in the magnetic materials which are the heart of most electric motors. Such materials as are available currently are based upon Nd-Fe-B, with expensive additives such as Dy used to improve the magnetic stability. To avoid problems of cost and supply as electrification becomes more widespread, new magnetic materials are required, and this project will seek to discover these through guided experiments.Candidate compositions can be identified based on the likelihood of elements to mix to produce an alloy and using current understanding of magnetic behaviour to exclude certain systems. Following this, high throughput methods can be used to screen many different compositions rapidly, creating and assessing many materials in a short space of time. Such methods will be developed using the advanced equipment available at Sheffield through the Henry Royce Institute, and applied to identify promising compositions. These will then be examined in greater detail to refine their composition and microstructure, with the industrial partner facilitating testing and validation at a larger scale.