The University of Texas at Arlington has been awarded a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a more efficient process for sourcing rare earth elements needed to produce high-performance magnets.
The project is led by physicist J. Ping Liu. It seeks to make the mining of these critical materials more cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable by using cheaper, more abundant materials. UTA said that magnets are crucial components in everyday devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones, as well as renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles. The initiative also addresses a critical national need: boosting domestic magnet production to reduce reliance on foreign suppliers.
“As consumer demand pushes us to make these items smaller, lighter and more powerful, manufacturers are struggling to obtain cost-effective raw materials necessary to make them,” Liu, a distinguished UTA professor and fellow of American Physical Society, said in a statement. “We’re working on scaling up more effective magnets that use fewer critical rare metals.”
Reducing challenges of rare earth mining
UTA said the grant is part of a $17 million investment from the Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Collaborative. Established in 2023, the program is designed to accelerate the development of U.S. supply chains for critical materials while minimizing the environmental impact of mining rare earth elements essential for advanced technology.
The university said that rare earth metals are a group of 17 elements that are actually not “rare” in the Earth’s crust, but are widely dispersed and difficult to extract.
Because they are usually part of much larger rock formations, mining them requires multiple stages of crushing, chemical processing, and refinement—practices that are costly, energy-intensive, and harmful to the environment, the university said.
A team effort to boost U.S. production
In an effort to overcome these challenges, Liu will collaborate with researchers from Ames National Laboratory in Iowa, a top research institution in materials science and engineering, especially in rare earth materials, and MP Materials, a Fort Worth-based magnet manufacturer.
The team plans to source rare earth elements from the Mountain Pass mine in Nevada, the largest rare earth mine in the Western Hemisphere. These materials will be processed at MP Materials’ Fort Worth facility and transformed into high-quality magnets for technology manufacturing, UTA said.
“Upon successful completion of the project, we plan to have a working pilot project that can be scaled for manufacturing and mass production,” Liu said. “Our new designs will create valuable, environmentally friendly manufacturing jobs while helping reduce our reliance on international suppliers for materials critical to high-tech devices.”
UTA said that investing in domestic magnet production has significant economic implications because the nation currently relies heavily on foreign suppliers, with China dominating more than 90% of global magnet manufacturing. That reliance poses risks to supply chain stability and national security, UTA said.
Citing a 2022 report from the Department of Energy, UTA said that establishing domestic supply chains for critical materials could save U.S. industries billions annually while strengthening their global competitiveness.
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