NATO STO

Rare Earth Elements (REE) are strategically important because of their unmatched performance and inclusion in all advanced NATO weapons and infrastructure to include communications, monitoring, transportation, and power generation. Their use ranges from Virginia class submarines to Aegis Destroyers, F-35 Lightning to precision guided munitions. There are concerns across NATO nations because the majority of the rare earth supply chain, including manufacturing capabilities, are dominated by government controlled state owned enterprises in a non-NATO nation - China. The world demand and competition for REEs is increasing due to growth in commercial electronics, electric vehicle industry, and renewable energy. These growing markets lessen the supply for military uses. Greater use of REEs are in the form of permanent magnets as the main building blocks for electrical machinery whether in the form of motors or generators. The Athens meeting concluded that the most important future ventures to mitigate the REE criticality include: (1) securing alternative RE supply chains and (2) identify new materials for high speed machinery, processing and topologies that reduce demand for REEs. This RTG addresses the latter. One technology that addresses that are hybrid motors based on hard and soft magnetic technologies exploiting rare earth free or rare earth lean permanent magnet-based stators and metal amorphous nanocomposites (MANC)-based rotors, which offer high power densities due to their ability to magnetically switch at higher frequencies than conventional Silicon-steels and FeCo-based magnets. This RTG aims at identifying novel motor topologies that exploit such materials as well as improvements to the materials and materials processing including rapid solidification processing and advanced manufacturing techniques. The impact of the technology for military technologies lies both in improvements in electric machine efficiencies as well as a resulting reduced demand for critical rare earth materials.