Materials/Manufacturing

Pensana Rakes In $100M Investment to Support Mine-to-Magnet Buildup as Ore Reserves Mushroom in Angola; Makes Offtake Deal with VAC 

Pensana has raked in a $100 million stock investment by an unnamed strategic Investor in support of the UK company’s mine-to-magnet strategy. The move follows soon after a detailed evaluation of its developing Longonjo property in Angola resulted in jumping by five times its content of rare earths for magnet applications — elevating the property’s status as an important potential future provider of magnetic feedstock outside China. […]

Electromagnetics

Proximity Effect Used to Synthesize Ferroelectric Materials 

Ferroelectrics are special materials with polarized positive and negative charges — like a magnet has north and south poles — that can be reversed when external electricity is applied. The materials will remain in these reversed states until more power is applied, making them useful for data storage and wireless communication applications. Now, turning a non-ferroelectric material into one may be possible simply by stacking it with another ferroelectric material, according to a team led by scientists from Penn State who demonstrated the phenomenon, called proximity ferroelectricity. […]