[brianhorakh]

The article doesn't say explicitly these are high performance non rare earth magnets.

Niron uses synthetic tetrataenite (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite) which is a fascinating material. Until a recent 2021 discovery it was believed that you could make it easily, but you'd need to let it cool slowly around 30,000 years! Only a few kg existed on earth from meteors.

But iron nitride Fe3N would also be a similarly good and less exotic choice.

https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magne...

[philipkglass]

Niron Magnetics is using iron nitride:

https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/Niron-Magnetics...

https://www.nironmagnetics.com/scientific-publications/

Based on their publications, it looks like they have achieved an energy product of 20 mega-gauss-oersteds (MGOe). This is not as high as neodymium iron boron magnets, which can range from about 35-52 MGOe, but it's significantly higher than common ferrite magnets (up to 5.2 MGOe) and is about equal to the lower end of the samarium cobalt magnet range (16-32 MGOe).

In one sense iron nitride is very simple; it uses only two common elements and its magnetism has been known for decades. But simple is not easy, since it is difficult to make bulk magnets from the material while maintaining the correct element ratio and structure. I hope that Niron succeeds.

I don't know if there are any companies yet trying to commercialize synthetic tetrataenite.

[brianhorakh]

Thank you for the correction!