US Patent Issued to Iowa State University Research Foundation on April 8 for "Fine grain structures for tough rare earth permanent magnets" (Iowa Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 9 -- United States Patent no. 12,272,471, issued on April 8, was assigned to Iowa State University Research Foundation Inc. (Ames, Iowa).

"Fine grain structures for tough rare earth permanent magnets" was invented by Baozhi Cui (Ames, Iowa) and Jun Cui (Ames, Iowa).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention provides fine grain structures for rare earth permanent magnets (REPMs) and their production in a manner to significantly enhance flexural strength and fracture toughness of the magnets with no or little sacrifice in the hard magnetic properties. The tough REPMs can have either homogeneous or heterogeneous refined grain microstructural architectures achieved...