Direct metallurgical recycling approach improves magnetic properties in rare earth alloys, suggesting new market potential.
This study presents a direct metallurgical approach for recycling end-of-life (EoL) sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets into competitive bonded magnets. The scrap was classified based on its rare earth content and converted into fresh recycled Nd-Fe-B powders via gas atomization. Three alloys were produced to analyze the effects of Ti and Zr additions at varying concentrations. Previous research showed that helium (He) as the atomizing gas results in finer powders with nearly fully amorphous particles. Based on this, two alloys were processed with He and one with argon (Ar), confirming that Ti and Zr enhance the glass forming ability of Nd-Fe-B alloys. After microstructural optimization by annealing, the powders exhibited improved magnetic properties. Laboratory specimens were produced by compression molding with epoxy resin as the bonding phase. Magnetic characterization of the isotropic bonded recycled Nd-Fe-B magnets revealed that this route could meet market demands for competitive bonded magnets.
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Martin et al. (2025) studied this question.
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