BA- 920 and 924 Tech Opportunity Sheet.pdf

TECHNOLOGY/LICENSING OPPORTUNITY

Production of Nickel-Cobalt and Samarium-Cobalt Magnetic Powder

Direct Conversion of Mixed Metal Oxides by a Molten Salt Electrochemical

Process

Opportunity: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managed and operated by Battelle Energy

Alliance, LLC (BEA), is offering the opportunity to enter into a license and/or collaborative research agreement to commercialize a new process for the production of Nickel-Cobalt and Samarium-Cobalt Alloy Powder from waste magnets/oxidized magnets/non-magnetic oxides.

Background: Nickel-Cobalt (Ni-Co) alloys offer a combination of useful properties including increased hardness, soft magnetic behavior, and increased strength. As a result, these alloys are being increasingly used in industries where stainless steel based magnets do not provide required performance characteristics. Current NiCo alloy fabrication processes are based on complex, multi-stage aqueous electrochemical process that are difficult to control. Samarium-Cobalt (Sm-Co) based magnet production is also faced with high process complexity and poor economics.

Description: Researchers at INL have developed a molten salt based electrolytic process to greatly simplify the production of Ni-Co and Sm-Co alloy powders. This process is able to manipulate the voltage to prepare a series of alloys with desired composition and shortens the synthesis process to just one step.

Applications: Because of their useful properties, nickel-cobalt alloys are used in electronics, magnetic sensors, actuators, micro-relays, inductors, medical devices, jet engines, and others. Samarium-cobalt is used to form permanent magnets for use in high temperature applications. This process also offers avenues for recycling waste magnets, oxidized metal and alloys.

Advantages: This simplified, one step process allows for a more energy-efficient manufacturing route. It uses relatively cheaper feedstock and chemicals and requires inexpensive instrumentation. This process also offers the possibility of preparing phase-pure magnetic alloys.

Impact: This has potential to reduce the fabrication cost of both transition metal based soft magnets and rare earth based permanent (also known as hard) magnets by at least 50% over current methods.

Development: These processes have been demonstrated at bench scale.

IP Status: Filed US Patent Application No. 16/388,272, “Methods of Forming Alloys by

Reducing Metal Oxides.”

INL is seeking to license the above intellectual property to a company with a demonstrated ability to bring such inventions to the market. Exclusive rights in defined fields of use may be available.

Please visit Technology Deployment’s website at https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment for more information on working with INL and the industrial partnering and technology transfer process.

Companies interested in learning more about this licensing opportunity should contact Ryan Bills at ryan.bills@inl.gov. The technical point of contact for this invention is Prabhat Tripathy, who can be reached via prabhat.tripathy@inl.gov.

https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment mailto:ryan.bills@inl.gov mailto:ryan.bills@inl.gov mailto:prabhat.tripathy@inl.gov mailto:prabhat.tripathy@inl.gov