Different magnetic materials (see related links for details) have great differences in application fields and development prospects due to their huge differences in performance and price. This paper chooses NdFeB permanent magnets, ferrite permanent magnets Magnetic and ferrite soft magnetic materials are introduced. 

Historically, the World Magnetic Materials Center has experienced changes from Europe (before World War II) to the United States (after World War II) to Japan (after the 1970s). The reason is nothing more than following the transfer of the downstream industry chain and meeting the optimization requirements for manufacturing costs. At present, the industry center is undergoing another transfer. In 2005, China produced a total of 290,000 tons of permanent magnet ferrite and 160,000 tons of soft ferrite, accounting for 46.8% and 55.2% of the world's total output, respectively. Sintered NdFeB and The total output of bonded NdFeB has also reached about 34,800 tons, accounting for more than 70% of the world's total output. China has become the world's "magnetic capital". 

Like the previous transfers, China can become the center of the magnetic material industry, and the most important driving force still comes from cost and industrial chain. 

In terms of cost advantages, China has huge cost advantages in manpower, land, water and electricity, etc. In addition, China is also one of the largest producers of neodymium, iron phosphorus, iron red, manganese tetroxide and strontium carbonate in the world. There are obvious advantages in the acquisition of main raw materials. 

Due to the cost advantage, sufficient supply of human and material resources, and broad market space, China has supported the rapid and stable growth of the domestic manufacturing industry, and China deserves to be the "manufacturing factory" in the world. The booming development of the downstream industry of magnetic materials in China provides a huge market demand space. 

Since there is no other region in the world that can provide such a superior production environment for the magnetic material industry, the transfer of magnetic materials to China has become a long-term trend. 

Industry development variables will increase in the next five years

In the past ten years, the capacity expansion of China's magnetic materials industry has been very rapid, which is mainly due to the common development of domestic and foreign enterprises. On the one hand, the production capacity of domestic enterprises is constantly improving, among which companies with technological and scale advantages such as Zhongke Sanhuan, Ningbo Yunsheng, Hengdian East Magnetic, and Tiantong Co., Ltd. have emerged. On the other hand, magnetic material manufacturing enterprises in developed countries have transferred their production capacity and technology to relatively backward regions due to high local production costs, while China, which has both cost and industrial chain advantages, has become the first choice. According to incomplete statistics, well-known companies that have invested in factories or cooperated in the mainland include Japan's TDK, FDK, EP-SON, Hitachi Metals, Sumitomo, South Korea's Lishu, Sanhe, Europe's PHILIPS, VAC, EPCOS, and the United States. ARNORD, MAGNEQUENCH, etc. 

However, the development speed of different magnetic materials may be quite different in the future. Specifically, under the trend of energy saving and miniaturization of devices, with the continuous development of new application fields and the rapid development of NdFeB motors, NdFeB motors are becoming more and more popular. The boron industry will maintain an average annual growth rate of 20% in the next five years. For ferrite magnetic materials, due to the saturation of low-end products and the development of less new fields, it is difficult to obtain the rapid growth of NdFeB. According to the "Eleventh Five-Year" plan of my country's magnetic material industry, the average annual growth rate of soft magnetic and permanent magnet ferrite materials in the world and China will drop to less than 10% in the next five years (although the "Tenth Five-Year" plan has serious problems underestimated, but the decline in future growth is unavoidable). 

It should be pointed out that products with higher technical content will still maintain rapid development, and industrial upgrading has become a trend, which is consistent with the background of the generally low domestic industry positioning and the continuous upgrading of downstream industries in the past. In terms of products, the main direction of permanent magnet material technology development is still stronger magnetic properties and more stable physical properties. Motor products will become the most potential application areas, while the development of soft ferrite materials will focus on low loss , high frequency, high permeability, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. 

The output and output value of Chinese enterprises are seriously unbalanced

Although China has occupied half of the world's magnetic material industry in terms of production capacity, the price of domestic magnetic materials is far lower than the international level, resulting in a mismatch between output and output value. In the international market, 30% of high-end products account for 70% of market sales, and the average price of magnetic material products in my country is about 50% lower than that in Japan. The main reasons for this phenomenon are the high proportion of low-end products of domestic magnetic materials and the low pricing power of domestic manufacturers, but from another perspective, it also means a broad space for development. 

In addition, the domestic industry concentration is still low, and there are many small and medium-sized enterprises. Even large-scale enterprises have a big gap compared with international giants. A set of widely cited data is that in 2004, TDK's annual sales revenue was about 8.5 billion US dollars, which was five times the total output value of China's magnetic materials industry. However, some high-quality domestic enterprises have initially mastered advanced production technology while rapidly expanding their production scale, and may become bigger and stronger in the future. 

Technology and customer resources have become necessary conditions for enterprise development

Relevant experts pointed out that according to the current structure of the magnetic material industry in my country, the following three aspects are worth noting: Compared with the historical level, the downstream industries of magnetic materials, such as the electronic component manufacturing industry, have a declining profit margin; raw material and labor costs is continuing to rise; demand is gradually shifting to high-end products. 

Due to rising costs and declining profitability of downstream industries, the living conditions of my country's magnetic material industry will deteriorate. The transfer of products to high-end has higher requirements for the technical level of Chinese enterprises. If Chinese enterprises want to obtain stable income and achieve long-term growth in the future development, they must meet the following two conditions:

The first condition is leading technology and high-end product structure. On this basis, enterprises can offset the rising cost through the improvement of technology, gradually replace foreign products, and at the same time meet the ever-changing needs of the downstream. 

The second condition is to form a stable cooperative relationship with high-quality customers. With the stable cooperative relationship with high-quality customers, on the one hand, it is conducive to the company to obtain stable and rich profits and create a brand, and on the other hand, it can ensure the sales of high-end products of the company. 

Since the above two need to be supported by the company's own strength, my country's magnetic material industry will gradually move towards integration in the future, and will show a trend of "stronger getting stronger". Industry giants. 

It is understood that Zhongke Sanhuan is the second largest NdFeB producer in the world and the largest in China. In 2005, its production capacity was close to 8,000 tons, accounting for about one-sixth of the world's total production capacity. Hengdian East Magnetic is the world's largest manufacturer of permanent magnet ferrite (48,100 tons per year) and one of the largest domestic manufacturers of soft ferrite (21,200 tons per year), accounting for 7.76% of the global total. % and 7.31%. Industry insiders believe that, judging from the current situation, Zhongke Sanhuan and Hengdian East Magnetic have basically reached the international advanced level, providing impetus for long-term development. 

Related Links: Overview of Magnetic Materials

Any substance can be magnetized in an external magnetic field, but according to the degree of magnetization and the properties it exhibits, substances can be roughly divided into three categories: paramagnetic, diamagnetic and ferromagnetic. Paramagnetic and diamagnetic materials are usually referred to as weak magnetic materials, while ferromagnetic materials are referred to as ferromagnetic materials, and the so-called magnetic materials usually refer to ferromagnetic materials. 

According to the difference in the difficulty of demagnetization after magnetization, the materials that are easy to demagnetize are called soft magnetic materials, and the materials that are not easy to demagnetize are called permanent magnetic materials. Soft magnetic materials have weak remanence and are easy to demagnetize. It is suitable for places where repeated magnetization is required, such as the magnetic head of the tape recorder, the memory element in the electronic computer, the switching power supply, the transformer and the core of the alternator, electromagnet and various high-frequency components, etc. The residual magnetism of the permanent magnet material is strong, and it is not easy to demagnetize, so it is suitable for making permanent magnets, which are used in permanent magnet motors, magnetic separators, speakers, magnetoelectric instruments and other equipment. 

There are many types of magnetic materials, and there are four main types of commercial permanent magnet materials: AlNiCo permanent magnets developed in the 1930s; ferrite magnets developed in the early 1950s; samarium cobalt magnets developed in the late 1960s; 80 The rare earth permanent magnet NdFeB was developed in the early 1990s; and the soft magnetic material has also experienced four development stages: metal soft magnetic material - ferrite soft magnetic material - amorphous soft magnetic material - nanocrystalline soft magnetic material. Restricted by price and research level, the currently relatively mature soft magnetic materials mainly include silicon steel sheets, soft ferrites and iron-based amorphous alloys. 

(From: Big Bit Electronic Transformer Forum)

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