News Releases

What should we do about single-use plastics? Tackling the growing problem of trash we can’t recycle

Researchers are looking at ways to upcycle plastics -- breaking down long polymer chains into shorter segments that can then be reused for a variety of chemicals and materials.

Physicists uncover new competing state of matter in superconducting material

A team of experimentalists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory and theoreticians at University of Alabama Birmingham discovered a remarkably long-lived new state of matter in an iron pnictide superconductor, which reveals a laser-induced formation of collective behaviors that compete with superconductivity.

Depiction of laser pulse excitement of electrons in superconducting material

CMI one of 32 R&D 100 Award winners for Department of Energy

Researchers at the Critical Materials Institute (CMI) and Ames Laboratory are winners of an R&D 100 Award. Researchers invented a magnet recycling process in which magnets are dissolved in water-based solutions, recovering more than 99 percent purity rare earth elements.

Critical Materials Institute takes major step toward printed anisotropic magnets

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute has taken a major step toward printed, aligned anisotropic magnets via additive manufacturing processes. The Energy Innovation Hub manufactured hybrid nylon bonded neodymium-iron-boron and samarium-iron-nitrogen magnet using the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Finding better magnets faster with 3D metal printing prototyping

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) used laser 3D metal printing to optimize a permanent magnet material that may make an economical alternative to the more expensive rare-earth neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) magnets in some applications.

CaloriSMART test system succeeds in magnetocaloric cooling

Researchers at Ames Laboratory have designed and built an advanced model system that successfully uses very small quantities of magnetocaloric materials to achieve refrigeration level cooling. The development marks an important step in creating new technologies to replace 100-year-old gas compression refrigeration with solid-state systems up to 30 percent more energy efficient.

Iowa cornfields could play a role in recycling old electronics

A new biochemical leaching process has been developed that uses corn stover as feedstock, and recovers valuable rare earth metals from electronic waste.

It’s nothing new to Iowans that corn and its byproducts can be used for high-tech applications ranging from bioplastics to ethanol. Using corn stover for what is essentially a mining process may seem like a stretch even for Iowa – the world’s biggest producer of corn—but the new process does indeed use stover as a key ingredient. The research was directed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute (CMI) headquartered at the Ames Laboratory on the Iowa State University campus, and carried out by scientists at Idaho and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and Purdue University.

Critical Materials Institute develops new acid-free magnet recycling process

A new rare-earth magnet recycling process developed by researchers at the Critical Materials Institute (CMI) dissolves magnets in an acid-free solution and recovers high purity rare earth elements. For shredded magnet-containing electronic wastes, the process does not require pre-processing such as pre-sorting or demagnetization of the electronic waste.

Critical Materials Institute manufactures magnets entirely from U.S.-sourced rare earths

The Critical Materials Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub, has fabricated magnets made entirely of domestically sourced and refined rare-earth metals. And that’s important, because rare-earth magnets are used in a wide and ever-increasing number of modern technologies, and the ability to produce them domestically could have broad positive impact on national economy and security.

New CMI process recycles magnets from factory floor

A new recycling method developed by scientists at the Critical Materials Institute, a U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub led by the Ames Laboratory, recovers valuable rare-earth magnetic material from manufacturing waste and creates useful magnets out of it. Efficient waste-recovery methods for rare-earth metals are one way to reduce demand for these limited mined resources.