I was just reading the YG Acoustics showed an Iron nitride (FeN) based loudspeaker at the High End 2026 in Vienna in collaboration with Scan-Speak and Niron. It looks like a conventional driver with iron joke and only the magnets are replaced by FeN.
Niron is presently the only producer of FeN magnets in small scale and are opening in 2 years a large factory, they also announced a collaboration with Faital but mostly target the EV market.
FeN magnets have higher theoretical magnetic strength than NdFeB magnets and obviously eliminate the dependency of rare earth minerals but have low coercivity.
There is another related newer magnetic material SmFeN. It contains samarium but this is a more frequent rare earth element. These magnets have a high coercivity like NdFeB, are very heat resistant but can not be sintered conventionally so they have to be bonded which reduces magnetic strength but with the advantage of no eddy currents.
My question is about coercivity, the parameter describing the resistance to other exterior magnetic fields. A voice coil produces a magnetic field which could approach the field strength of the permanent magnet structure. Does that play a role in real world long term use of speaker drivers? I was reading it could be an issue with AlNiCo drivers which have like FeN low magnetic coercivity.
Niron is presently the only producer of FeN magnets in small scale and are opening in 2 years a large factory, they also announced a collaboration with Faital but mostly target the EV market.
FeN magnets have higher theoretical magnetic strength than NdFeB magnets and obviously eliminate the dependency of rare earth minerals but have low coercivity.
There is another related newer magnetic material SmFeN. It contains samarium but this is a more frequent rare earth element. These magnets have a high coercivity like NdFeB, are very heat resistant but can not be sintered conventionally so they have to be bonded which reduces magnetic strength but with the advantage of no eddy currents.
My question is about coercivity, the parameter describing the resistance to other exterior magnetic fields. A voice coil produces a magnetic field which could approach the field strength of the permanent magnet structure. Does that play a role in real world long term use of speaker drivers? I was reading it could be an issue with AlNiCo drivers which have like FeN low magnetic coercivity.
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