The Critical Materials Innovation Hub has created unique facilities that are available for additional research and collaboration. These include the following.
- Advanced Magnet Facility
-
The Advanced Magnet Facility (AMF) at Ames National Laboratory includes a newly renovated 2000 sq. ft of high-bay space for preparing permanent magnets at kilogram scale. The facility includes all the systems needed for permanent magnets production including decrepitation, jetmilling, compaction, sintering, magnetizing, and testing. The AMF offers a pre-pilot capability to accelerate the development and deployment of permanent magnets by bridging the gap between laboratory experiments and commercial production. A suite of magnet testing equipment at Ames National Laboratory enables the testing of the magnets after production.
- Controlled Atmosphere Magnet Processing Systems Facility
-
The Controlled Atmosphere Magnets Processing System (CAMPS) enables small-scale (≤100 g) development of permanent magnets of different compositions. It is well suited for eliminatingthe contribution of impurities which is typically required to establish the baseline composition for future large-scale magnet production. Different inert atmospheres can be supported e.g., nitrogen & argon. Magnet alloys can be milled, analyzed for size and composition, compacted, magnetized, heated, slowly cooled, or quenched, in inert atmospheres. Hydrogen decrepitation and jet milling can also be performed. Controlling many parts of the equipment in the CAMPSfrom the outside makes it user-friendly. A suite of magnet testing equipment at Ames National Laboratory enables the testing of the magnets after production.
- Critical Materials Recycling Facilities
-
Ames National Laboratory is a world leader in recycling critical materials from end-of-life devices and systems. Materials such as rare earth magnets and batteries can be recycled to recover the critical materials contents. The CMRF is equipped with wet chemical processing systems, ICP-OES, various battery cycling systems, microwave processing units, centrifuges, multiple furnace lines, capability for handling various chemicals, thermal analysis systems from cryogenic to 1500 ℃, and many more.
CMi unique facilities as of December 2019 included the following. Additional information about some of these is available online here.
- High-Throughput Capabilities at Ames Laboratory
- Pilot-Scale Separations Test Bed Facility
- Filtration Test Facility
- Bulk Combinatoric Materials Synthesis Facility
- Rapid Analysis of Combinatoric Sample Arrays
- Ferromagnetic Materials Characterization Facility
- Thermal Analysis in High Magnetic Fields
- Improved criticality assessment capacity
- Thin-film combinatoric library production facility
- Electrophoretic deposition capability
- Toxicology test capability
- Rapid magnetic property assessment
- Rapid thermodynamic property assessment
- Micro-x-ray fluorescence analysis capability
- Metal reduction capabilities
- Robotic high-throughput catalyst development system