Magnetics Business & Technology - July/August 2022 - 30

INDUSTRY NEWS
Western Digital Makes Strategic Investment in Niron Magnetics
nese government announced a consolidation of rare earth
producers, raising concern among buyers. These developments
have led to increased interest in alternative sources
of magnet supply. " The pilot facility will enable the company
to provide sampling to key commercial partners for device
prototyping initiatives.
Western Digital Capital, the investment arm of data storage
giant Western Digital which is a leading manufacturer of
magnetic hard disk drives, has made a strategic investment
into Niron Magnetics, a developer of " clean earth magnets "
which don't require rare earth materials. The amount was not
disclosed but it adds to $21.3 million the company raised last
year.
" Western Digital is driving toward a more sustainable supply
chain, and magnets play a critical role in that chain for
HDDs, " said Dan Steere, senior vice president, Western
Digital Capital. " While most of the materials used in our HDDs
are plentiful and readily available, rare-earth magnets are
difficult to process and available only in limited geographies
and quantities. Niron's technology has the potential to help
strengthen our supply chain and reduce the life cycle impacts
of our products. "
" As demand in the data storage market
continues to grow, innovation is essential
to find an alternative for the magnets used
in the actuators of disk read- and-write
heads and spindle drive motors while
avoiding environmentally damaging rare
earth mining and mitigating the risk of
supply disruptions, " said Andy Blackburn,
CEO of Niron.
Niron's technology leverages materials
science innovations to eliminate the
need for rare earth content in magnets and instead uses some
of the most common elements on earth, iron and nitrogen. Its
manufacturing techniques precisely control and manipulate
the crystal structure of iron nitride (Fe16N2) to obtain high
strength magnets with high temperature resiliency.
A spinout from the research labs at University of Minnesota,
Niron is presently building a pilot production plant. Construction
began at the end of February and work on the 25,000 sq ft
facility is currently underway, Blackburn reported in an update
in February. Commercially, developments in the permanent
magnet market continue to attract the attention of potential
customers, he noted. " Rare earth prices have increased about
40% since December 2021 and are now more than 3x higher
than what they were 16 months ago. Additionally, the Chi30
Magnetics Business & Technology * July/August 2022
Its energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR)
is the first implementation of the EAMR technology to scale
beyond legacy versions of perpendicular magnetic recording.
ePMR was productized as part of Western Digital's research
and characterization of other EAMR technologies such as
microwave-assisted magnetic recording. In ePMR, the recording
head generates a magnetic field that aligns magnetic elements
in the media grains. Aligned media grains represent the
individual 1s and 0s of data being written. Higher bits per inch
BPI and thus higher areal density is achieved when individual
bits of data can be written closer together.
For more info, www.westerndigital.com and www.nironmagnetics.com.
www.MagneticsMag.com
At
Western Digital, the company's new energy-assisted magnetic
recording products are bringing new levels of capability
to data centers. Designed for public and private cloud environments,
its Ultrastar devices achieve higher memory densities
to store massive amounts of data. A breakthrough in hard disk
drive (HDD) recording technology, EAMR enables higher areal
density through increased bits per inch on HDD tracks.
Andy Blackburn, CEO
of Niron Magnetics
http://www.westerndigital.com http://www.nironmagnetics.com http://www.nironmagnetics.com http://www.MagneticsMag.com
Magnetics Business & Technology - July/August 2022

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