Rare earth elements vital to electric and hybrid vehicles and numerous other energy technologies could one day be replaced at least in part by compounds of heavy transition elements, a team of researchers has discovered. This finding goes against conventional wisdom that high performance magnets require rare earth elements mixed with "first row" light transition elements. "We found that two second row compounds have extraordinary unanticipated high magnetic ordering temperatures, in one case in excess of 750 degrees Celsius, based solely on heavy second row transition element technetium," said co-author David Singh of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Theoretical work done at ORNL explains this as band magnetism. These findings have been published in Physical Review Letters and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
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