Magnets and magnetic materials are essential components in numerous renewable energy applications, playing a key role in harvesting and converting natural energy into usable electricity. They are integral to the operation of wind turbines, hydroelectric power plants, electric vehicle motors, and many other clean energy technologies and electronic devices such as hard disk drives, generators, converters and actuators, making them an essential component in the green energy transition and transportation sector. For these reasons, the demand for high-performance magnets is expected to grow substantially and the development of strong, lightweight, and durable permanent magnets is crucial to improve the efficiency of new technologies and devices. Most of the permanent magnet market is currently dominated by cheap ferrites with low magnetic performance or more critical rare-earth (RE) based magnets with excellent properties (Nd-Fe-B, Sm-Co). In the last decade, more concerns have surrounded the environmental impact and price volatility of rare-earth magnets. Thus, one of the possible ways to reduce the demand for such critical materials is to develop a new class of sustainable "gap magnets" with intermediate performance between ferrites and RE-magnets. This would allow for the substitution of RE-magnets in those applications that do not require high energy density, such as small electric motors, sensors and actuators.
My research interests are mainly focused on the development and characterization of new materials for rare-earth-free permanent magnets. Synthesis techniques for sample preparation include arc melting, induction melting, melt spinning, ball milling and mechanical alloying. Characterization techniques for intrinsic (Curie temperature, saturation magnetization, anisotropy field) and extrinsic (remanence, coercivity, energy product) magnetic properties include vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM), closed loop magnetometry, AC susceptometry,singular point detection (SPD). I am involved in different projects and collaborations with companies active in the automotive sector and magnetic powders manufacturers in Italy.
