Harman Continues Quest For Neodymium Substitutes in Speaker Magnets

Harman has done “an incredible amount of work” to replace neodymium magnets in its audio products, Chris Dragon, senior director of global brand marketing, told Consumer Electronics Daily. Soaring prices of neodymium during the past couple of years (CED Aug 31/11 p1) took a toll on the bottom line at Harman and other consumer electronics manufacturers who used neodymium in magnets for its ability to provide exceptional strength in tiny form factors.

Although neodymium, a rare earth metal, can be found in many locations around the world, it is currently produced almost exclusively in China, which has put stringent quotas on the mining of rare earth metals over the past couple of years, resulting in skyrocketing raw materials price increases over the past couple of years for neodymium. On an earnings call in August 2011, Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal cited raw components price increases of 1,000 percent, which cost the company $85 million. Harman largely passed on price increases to customers, it said.

Since then, Harman audio designers have re-engineered “almost all home, multimedia and car audio products to utilize ferrite magnets,” Dragon said. Harman engineers were able to draw on years of expertise in acoustics, he said, which has “enabled us to not take the lazy engineering path, letting neo magnet structures do the work.”

Engineers at Harman haven’t been able to eliminate neodymium from the bill of materials completely. Certain car audio applications continue to require small neodymium magnets due to space and weight requirements, Dragon said. Harman engineers are experimenting with new materials and approaches that are yielding “promising results that we will continue to refine with the goal of implementation going forward,” Dragon said. While the use of neodymium has been “greatly minimized, there is still work to be done before full replacement is possible,” he said. The overall process isn’t a short development activity cycle, he said, because the company needs to maintain the same sound quality that neodymium magnets deliver.

Meanwhile, efforts are in the works to deal with neodymium and other rare earth shortages on the homefront. The Department of Energy announced earlier this month (http://1.usa.gov/SkwGE6) it had awarded Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, $120 million over five years to develop an Energy Innovation Hub that will develop solutions to the domestic shortages of rare earth metals and other materials critical for U.S. energy security. Loudspeakers are just one CE category that uses neodymium -- the rare earth is also critical to the manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and energy-efficient lighting.

According to DOE, supply constraints of neodymium -- along with dysprosium, terbium, europium and yttrium -- may affect clean energy technology deployment in the coming years. The Energy Innovation Hub will address challenges across the life cycle of these materials, DOE said. The Hub will focus on enabling new sources; improving the economics of existing sources; accelerating material development and deployment; devising more efficient use in manufacturing; recycling and reuse; and developing strategies to assess and address the life cycles of new materials, DOE said.