Advances in Heavy-Rare-Earth-Free or Lean Permanent Magnets

Dear Colleagues,

Permanent magnets are the key components in high-performance motors and generators used for energy conversion, consumer electronics, medical devices, data storage, and magnetic sensors. NdFeB magnets have the largest market share among permanent magnets as they are a high-energy product. NdFeB magnets manufactured using the sintering method require the addition of proper amounts of heavy rare earth elements to improve their coercivity for operation under high-temperature conditions (e.g., 120–200 °C for typical electric motor applications). However, heavy rare earth elements have lean abundance, high cost, and supply chain risk. The increasing demand for permanent magnets in both quantity and quality calls for alternatives to the sintered NdFeB magnets doped with heavy rare earth elements.

First-principles computations have become a powerful tool for predicting critical magnetic properties, including the Curie temperature, saturation magnetization, and magnetic anisotropy, which are essential for validating coercivity. The integration of experimental methods with computational techniques will help us to accelerate the discovery of permanent magnets that meet specific requirements.

Both experimental and computational studies on the advances in NdFeB magnets fabricated by novel methods or other magnet systems free of or lean for heavy rare earth elements are welcome in this Special Issue.

Dr. Chaochao Pan
Guest Editor Assistant

Dr. Tao Jiang
Dr. Baozhi Cui
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Crystals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.