Domestically produced NdFeB magnets have broken foreign technological monopolies and achieved import substitution.

Recently, domestically produced NdFeB magnets have achieved a significant breakthrough in high-end fields, successfully breaking the long-term foreign technological monopoly and realizing the import substitution of key materials. This marks a new stage of independent control for China's rare earth permanent magnet material industry.

For a long time, the core production technology of high-performance NdFeB magnets has been controlled by enterprises from countries such as Japan and Germany, with 80% of the domestic high-end market relying on imports. These magnets, known for their high remanence and high coercivity, are widely used in fields such as drive motors for new energy vehicles and high-precision medical equipment. The technological barriers once restricted the development of related industries in China.

The turning point came in 2022 when the Institute of Rare Earth Materials, Chinese Academy of Sciences, joined forces with Ningbo Yunsheng and Zhongke Sanhuan, among other enterprises, to form a research team targeting "bottleneck" technologies such as magnet grain refinement and anti-oxidation coatings for concentrated R&D efforts. After 18 months of experimentation, they successfully developed the "nano-grain boundary regulation technology," enabling domestically produced NdFeB magnets to achieve a maximum magnetic energy product exceeding 58 MGOe and a coercivity of 2800 kA/m, with performance indicators on par with international standards.

Currently, this technology has been put into mass production at Anhui Earth-Panda Advanced Magnetic Material Co., Ltd. Its produced large-sized magnetic rings with diameters above Φ50mm have passed rigorous certifications from companies such as Tesla and BYD. In the first half of 2024, a cumulative supply of 1,200 tons was achieved, reducing costs by 30% compared to imported products. According to data from the China Rare Earth Industry Association, the market share of domestically produced high-end NdFeB magnets has increased to 45% in 2024, up by 27 percentage points from 2021.

Industry experts stated that this breakthrough not only facilitates the transformation of China's rare earth resource advantages into technological advantages but also helps reduce the external dependency of industries such as new energy vehicles and industrial robots. With the gradual commissioning of production lines, it is expected that the import substitution rate will exceed 60% by 2025, providing a "Chinese solution" for the restructuring of the global rare earth permanent magnet material supply chain.