Materials Science · 3D Printing
No rare earths. No cobalt. Just iron, silicon, boron, niobium, and nickel — printed into a glass that barely wastes any energy at all.
European researchers just 3D-printed a metal that refuses to crystallize, and that refusal might be exactly what makes electric motors more efficient.
Researchers from the European AM2SoftMag project, led by Saarland University in Germany with IMDEA Materials in Spain, have developed a new iron-based metallic glass that can be 3D printed for use in more efficient electric motors. The alloy — made of iron, silicon, boron, niobium, and nickel — contains no cobalt and no rare earth elements, sidestepping both a socially fraught supply chain and an unstable one. Using a double laser scanning strategy during laser powder bed fusion printing, the team achieved a fully amorphous structure with over 92% density and an extremely low magnetic coercivity of just 44 amperes per meter. The material resists crystallizing up to a thickness of 1 millimeter, roughly ten times better than commercial alternatives. The findings are published in Acta Materialia, and the consortium's next step is testing the material in real motor rotors and stators.
The new alloy was printed layer by layer using laser powder bed fusion, achieving a fully amorphous structure with over 92% density.
Signal Depth Navigator
European researchers 3D-printed a new iron-based glass alloy designed to cut energy losses in electric motors. This article covers what makes a metal "glass" in the first place, why rare earths and cobalt keep turning up in motor materials, what this specific alloy is made of, the double-laser printing trick that made it possible, how researchers proved it was genuinely uniform, and what happens next on the road to a real motor.
A New Glass Alloy Could Make Electric Motors Waste Less Energy
Every electric motor wastes some of the energy it uses, mostly as heat, in the magnetic core that generates its spinning force.
Researchers from the European AM2SoftMag project have developed a new material aimed directly at that waste: an iron-based metallic glass, designed to be 3D printed into motor components.
The alloy was designed by researchers at Saarland University in Germany, with key manufacturing and verification work carried out at IMDEA Materials in Spain.
Two details make it immediately notable: it contains no cobalt, an element tied to serious social and ethical concerns in its supply chain, and no rare earth elements, whose supply chain is politically unstable for entirely different reasons.
On top of that, it can be 3D printed in a fully amorphous state with a density exceeding 92%, giving it genuinely exceptional magnetic properties.
The findings, recently published in Acta Materialia, point toward real efficiency gains for the electric transportation sector.
What Makes a Metal "Glass"
Most metals are crystalline — their atoms lock into a neat, repeating, orderly pattern as the metal cools and solidifies.
A metallic glass skips that step. Its atoms freeze into a disordered, glass-like arrangement instead, with no repeating crystal structure at all.
Specifically, that disordered structure significantly reduces two sources of energy loss: eddy current losses, which cause unwanted heating inside components, and magnetic losses more broadly.
The challenge has always been manufacturing. Producing these materials through laser powder bed fusion, a common metal 3D printing method, traditionally caused unwanted crystallization from repeated heating and cooling cycles during the print itself.
In other words, the very process needed to shape the material kept undoing the disordered structure that made it valuable in the first place.
Why Rare Earths and Cobalt Keep Showing Up in Motors
High-performance electric motors have long leaned on materials containing rare earth elements or cobalt, because both deliver strong magnetic performance in a compact space.
That performance comes with real costs attached. Cobalt mining has been linked to serious social and human rights concerns in parts of its supply chain.
Rare earth elements carry a different problem: their processing is concentrated in a small number of countries, making the supply chain vulnerable to political disruption.
Automakers and motor manufacturers everywhere have been actively searching for materials that sidestep both problems at once, without giving up the magnetic performance that makes a motor efficient.
This iron-based glass alloy is a direct entry in that search — built from iron, silicon, boron, niobium, and nickel, none of which carry either of that supply chain baggage.
The Alloy: Iron, Silicon, Boron, Niobium, and Nickel
The specific composition matters here, because getting a metallic glass to resist crystallization during printing is a genuinely difficult balancing act.
This alloy showed greater resistance to devitrification — the technical term for a glass reverting back to a crystalline structure — than current commercial materials.
| Property | Commercial Alternatives | New Fe-Based Alloy |
|---|---|---|
| Critical thickness before crystallizing | Roughly 0.1 mm | Up to 1 mm |
| Contains cobalt or rare earths | Often yes | No |
| Magnetic coercivity | Higher | 44 A/m |
In practical terms, the new alloy achieved a critical thickness of up to 1 millimeter without crystallizing — nearly ten times greater than commercial alternatives can manage.
That difference isn't just a lab curiosity. A thicker printable cross-section without crystallization means genuinely usable, structurally meaningful motor components, not just thin experimental films.
The 3D Printing Trick: Double-Laser Scanning
Getting the alloy's composition right was only half the challenge. The team also had to solve the printing process itself.
Their solution was a double laser scanning strategy, combined with carefully controlled time delays between passes — a way of managing the repeated heating and cooling that normally triggers crystallization.
That technique enabled components with a density exceeding 92% and a fully amorphous structure — the disordered, glass-like arrangement the material depends on for its magnetic performance.
The payoff was an extraordinarily low magnetic coercivity of just 44 amperes per meter — a measure of how easily the material's magnetic domains flip direction, with lower numbers meaning less wasted energy per cycle.
Researchers describe this combination as placing the method among the most effective developed to date for 3D printing this type of material.
How They Proved It Was Actually Uniform
A material can look amorphous in one spot and still hide inconsistencies elsewhere — which is exactly what the team at IMDEA Materials set out to rule out.
Researchers from the Sustainable Metallurgy Group, led by María Teresa Pérez Prado, optimized the laser powder bed fusion manufacturing parameters used to produce the alloy.
To confirm the material's quality, the team used X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, and atom probe tomography — three complementary ways of examining a material's structure at extremely fine scales.
Together, these techniques confirmed that the alloy's chemical elements were distributed completely randomly throughout the structure, with no clumping or uneven regions.
Pérez Prado explained that this careful design and processing approach lets the team avoid crystallization during manufacturing altogether.
That even distribution is what ensures homogeneous mechanical and magnetic properties across an entire printed component, not just in isolated test regions.
From Lab Sample to Motor Rotor
It's worth being clear about where this research actually stands: it's a validated material and process, not yet a component installed in a working motor.
The consortium behind the work includes Saarland University, IMDEA Materials, the Italian National Metrology Institute, and Technische Universität Berlin — a genuinely broad, multi-country research effort.
Their next steps are specific and practical: eliminating remaining defects in the printed material, scaling up the manufacturing process beyond small lab samples, and evaluating performance in real prototypes.
Those prototypes are explicitly targeted at high-efficiency electric motor rotors and stators — the exact components where soft magnetic materials like this one matter most.
Pérez Prado frames the ultimate goal plainly: a material with excellent magnetic behavior that could meaningfully improve motor efficiency and substantially reduce overall energy waste.
Manohar Insight
What I appreciate about this research is how unglamorous its actual innovation is — a printing technique, timed precisely, to stop a material from doing what it naturally wants to do.
There's no exotic new element here, no dramatic discovery of a hidden compound. Just iron, silicon, boron, niobium, and nickel, arranged in a way that refuses to crystallize.
That's precisely why it's credible. The path to sidestepping rare earths and cobalt doesn't have to run through some exotic new material — sometimes it runs through smarter processing of materials that were sitting in plain sight.
I'd put this alongside the broader push toward rare-earth-free motors happening across the industry right now — a different tool aimed at the same underlying supply chain problem.
The tenfold improvement in critical thickness is the number I'd watch most closely. That's the detail standing between "interesting lab result" and "usable in a real rotor."
I'd treat this exactly as the consortium does — a validated material with a clear next step, not a motor upgrade you'll see in a showroom next year.
The real achievement here isn't a new metal. It's proving that a printer can be taught to stop a material from settling into its most natural, least useful shape.
Join the Signal
Between chasing exotic new materials and getting smarter about printing familiar ones, which do you think will get rare-earth-free motors to market faster? Share your take in the comments.
#MaterialsScience #3DPrinting #ElectricMotors #MetallicGlass #EVTechnology #EnergyEfficiency #KMManoharInsights
Explore More
AI Didn't Just Discover New Magnetic Materials — It Quietly Challenged a Global DependencyA different route to the same goal: using AI to find magnetic materials that skip rare earths entirely.
AI Decodes Magnetic "Maze Domains": A Breakthrough That Could Supercharge EV Motor EfficiencyMore groundwork on squeezing extra efficiency out of the magnetic materials inside EV motors.
Scientists Built a Motor Without Magnets — And It Actually WorksAn even more radical answer to the rare-earth-magnet problem: removing magnets from the equation.
Five Ways 3D Printing Is Quietly Transforming Scientific Lab WorkA broader look at the printing techniques making results like this one possible in the first place.
Rare Earth Supply Chain 2026: Strategic Minerals, NdFeB Magnet Demand & Investment OutlookThe bigger market picture behind why avoiding rare earths and cobalt matters so much right now.
About the Author
K M Manohar is an independent Sci-Tech writer and research curator who explains breakthrough discoveries that are shaping the future of technology.
Comments
Post a Comment