Unfortunately, there are already many years since iron nitride permanent magnets have been promised, but still no commercial products using them are in sight.<p>There are no doubts about the magnetic properties of iron nitride, but it appears that either it is very difficult to reproduce the conditions when the desired crystal structure is formed, or it is very difficult to stabilize the crystal structure to ensure an adequate lifetime, or both.<p>Like for too many other promising new products, some startup is formed, which claims to be able to commercialize the new technology, which is secured by a patent portfolio, and they explain with plenty of details the great advantages of their future products.<p>Nevertheless, they do not say a single a word about the obstacles that, unless overcome, will completely prevent the production of their planned commercial products. Moreover, they usually still do not have the slightest idea about how to overcome those obstacles, they just hope that they will eventually find a way.<p>In most cases that startup ends in a failure and no new products appear, even if the world might in fact be full of people who would have known how to overcome those obstacles, except that the startup has never shared their problems, hoping that by solving them alone they would not need to share the future profits that they are expecting.<p>Those who have the initial good ideas about a new technology only seldom are also able to solve all the problems that appear on the way towards a manufacturable product.
Didn't Tesla recently announce [1] that they were going to produce a new generation of motors without rare earth materials?<p>[1] <a href="https://electrek.co/2023/03/01/tesla-is-going-back-to-ev-motors-with-no-rare-earth-elements/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://electrek.co/2023/03/01/tesla-is-going-back-to-ev-mot...</a>
I'm patiently waiting for Niron Magnetics[1] to deliver product. The company was discussed here in a thread 5 months ago[2] when this article first came out.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nironmagnetics.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.nironmagnetics.com/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34359383">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34359383</a>
TL;DR Iron and Urea can be processed to form very high strength room temperature magnets, but industrial scale requires more work.<p>Not in the article: iron and urea are commonly available without geopolitical worries