Why magnetic materials matter now
My research spans a broad spectrum — from fundamental studies of hard and soft magnetic materials to the development of entirely new magnetic phases. It's work aimed squarely at the 21st century's demand for materials that are stronger, lighter, and more energy-efficient.
Sustainable energy systems, data storage, advanced transportation, and emerging fields like magnetic refrigeration, quantum computing, and medical imaging are all fundamentally enabled by high-performance magnetic materials. My focus sits at the intersection of synthesizing new functional material systems and building the goal-specific apparatus needed to characterize them properly.
A demand curve that outpaces supply
Rare-earth permanent magnets sit at the center of the clean-energy transition — and the numbers involved are steep.
Wind
EU Nd + Pr demand for wind turbines, 2030 → 2050, at up to 232 kg of Nd-Pr per megawatt installed.
EVs
Global EV sales, 2022 → 2040, each motor needing roughly 0.5–1.5 kg of neodymium.
Overall
Projected growth in Nd and Dy demand by 2030 and by 2050, respectively — driven mainly by EVs and wind.
Key contributions
A new hardening mechanism
Contributed to discovering a novel magnetic hardening mechanism for Nd-Fe-B permanent magnets based on solid-state phase transformation — showing that phase-transformation pathways can raise coercivity without relying on traditional grain-boundary diffusion. That opens new routes for magnet design and processing.
Net-shape Mn-Al magnets
Systematically studied the microstructure and magnetic properties of Mn-Al-C permanent magnets across electron beam melting, mechanical alloying, and powder metallurgy. Produced net-shape Mn-Al magnets by electron beam melting, reaching 90% of the desired ferromagnetic τ-phase after optimized annealing — a rare-earth-free candidate that directly reduces critical raw material dependence.
Perpendicular anisotropy in YCo₅ and CeCo₅
Grew YCo₅±x and CeCo₅ thin films with perpendicular anisotropy by molecular beam epitaxy, mapping how growth conditions shape the magnetic properties of rare-earth–transition-metal films for spintronics and high-density recording.
High-anisotropy MnBi films
Studied low-temperature-phase, c-axis-oriented manganese bismuth thin films with high anisotropy, grown from a Mn₅₅Bi₄₅ target — demonstrating controlled crystallographic orientation in another promising rare-earth-free permanent magnet system.
Rapid solidification of Nd₁₊ₓFe₁₁Ti
Investigated phase formation and magnetic properties of Nd₁₊ₓFe₁₁Ti compounds made by rapid solidification, exploring these as alternative permanent-magnet materials that need less neodymium.
Anomalous Hall effect in La(Fe,Co)₁₃₋ₓSiₓ
Studied the anomalous Hall effect in this compound family, providing insight into electronic transport and magnetic structure and contributing to the fundamental understanding of magnetotransport in complex magnetic materials.
Engineering anisotropy through phase separation
Showed that controlled phase separation in Y-Co thin films can be used deliberately to induce uniaxial anisotropy — turning what is often an unwanted effect into a design tool for engineering magnetic behavior in thin-film systems.
Alongside these, my work extends into complex magnetic oxides — ferrimagnetism, exchange bias, and spin-glass behavior in disordered La₂CrNiO₆ — and into dynamic unidirectional anisotropy in cubic FeGe, probing the fundamental physics that governs magnetic behavior more broadly.
The concentration problem
Rare-earth criticality has become a strategic priority for governments worldwide — the numbers explain why.
China's position in the supply chain
Share of global reserves, mine production, oxide processing & separation, and magnet manufacturing, respectively. The concentration is worst precisely in the midstream — separation and metal conversion — which is the hardest stage to replicate quickly.
Why this can't be fixed fast
Typical time to bring a new mine and processing facility online — which is why materials-level solutions (rare-earth-free or rare-earth-lean magnets) matter as much as new supply.
Where machine learning fits in
Data-driven methods are becoming a genuine new paradigm for this field — not a buzzword bolted onto it.
Analyzing large materials datasets is starting to predict physical properties, discover new candidates, and optimize existing ones directly. That's directly relevant to my work on new magnetic phases: high-throughput screening can narrow the search for high-performance magnets with reduced critical-element content long before a single sample gets melted.