Week 0: Making Magnets
Makeen S -
Hi everyone! My name is Makeen Shafer and my senior project is a continuation of my research internship at the University of Arizona. More specifically, I’ve had loads of fun working with Dr. Kong’s materials science research group over the last eight months.
My project of interest involves the synthesis and characterization of non-rare earth based magnetic materials. Rare earths are a collection of elements that are essential to many electrical components. Particularly in magnets, the strongest and most widely used commercial magnets are based on rare earths. However, sourcing these elements comes at significant cost: a large majority of rare earths are imported from China and, especially in recent years, there have been significant issues with this supply chain. Additionally, rare earths are environmentally hazardous to extract, often requiring disruptive pit mining and excessive chemical leaching to separate ores.
Currently, my project is investigating compounds of the six compositions (Mo,W)2(Fe,Co,Ni)3Si and comparing them to their rare earth based counterparts. At the moment, we are primarily working on making our samples more pure before taking further measurements. We’ve made progress in synthesizing some semi-pure samples and measuring their Curie temperatures (the temperature at which a material transitions out of ferromagnetism), but over the term of my senior project, I hope to more consistently synthesize pure samples and collect more detailed magnetic data.
I’m super excited to focus more on this research and I’ll see you all in the next post!
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