University of Minnesota startup reinvents permanent magnets for a sustainable future
Based on research from Professor Jian-Ping Wang, Niron Magnetics is reshaping the magnet industry.
When it comes to the invisible forces shaping modern technology, few are more powerful, or underappreciated, than permanent magnets.
At the University of Minnesota, Jian-Ping Wang, a professor in the College of Science and Engineering's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has spent more than two decades working at the frontier of magnetic materials, and his efforts are now translating into tangible change in the world of clean technology and manufacturing.
Wang co-founded Niron Magnetics, a University spinoff developing the world’s first high-powered, permanent magnet made without the use of rare-earth materials. Instead, Niron's magnets are made from iron and nitrogen.
This breakthrough eliminates the need for rare-earth elements, which are geopolitically sensitive and potentially environmentally destructive to mine.
Niron's magnets could replace current rare-earth magnets that are a cornerstone of renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, and countless other industrial applications.“Right now, we depend too much on rare-earth elements,” Wang says. “They give us performance, but at a high cost.”
Reimagining magnets
When Wang arrived at the University in 2002, creating magnets from iron and nitrogen was one of his most ambitious projects. He and his team of student researchers built specialized machines from scratch and got working.
Eight years later, in 2010, they finally cracked the code. The compound they created, Fe16N2, turned out to be 18 percent stronger than any magnetic compound on the market. And unlike previous attempts by others, Wang and his colleagues were able to reliably reproduce the results.
A year later, Wang was able to make the magnets permanent, meaning they would not lose their charge over time. That led to the creation of Niron Magnetics in 2014, with support from the University of Minnesota and a Silicon Valley venture capital company. Wang is currently an executive advisor for the company, after previously serving as Niron’s chief science officer.
Wang’s magnets were also named one of TIME magazine’s best inventions of 2023.
A sustainable solution
Magnets are found in a host of products that people use every single day, from cellphones and computer hard drives to credit cards and microwaves.
“Permanent magnets are the unsung heroes of our modern society,” Wang says. “Without them, many systems just don’t work. They convert electrical energy into mechanical motion in the most energy-efficient way. They’re in everything.”
Almost all permanent magnets are made using rare-earth materials, which need to be mined and extracted to acquire. Niron’s magnets are made from iron and nitrogen, two materials that are abundant.
Where these rare-earth materials are located is another hurdle: 90 percent of them are currently mined in China. This makes these materials susceptible to geopolitical conflicts, such as earlier this year when China stopped exporting these materials to the United States in a trade dispute between the two countries.
“On the day the U.S. announced new tariffs, we got a call from a chief procurement officer of a $90 billion company [who] asked to talk to us because they knew they were in trouble with their supply chain for magnets,” says John Larson, Niron’s chief operating officer.
As society moves toward a more sustainable and clean-energy-focused world, finding an alternative solution to these rare-earth materials could make a company like Niron worth billions.
Launching a University startup
But Niron’s success as a company did not happen overnight.
Larson, a University of Minnesota PhD graduate and current chief operating officer at Niron, was the second employee hired by the startup in 2017 after working as an engineer in the semiconductor industry.
The beginning was humble.
“I was literally working out of a Starbucks, coordinating with one other engineer at the University and Professor Wang’s team,” he says.
The business has since grown and gained national and international attention for its potential. It has secured more than $100 million in funding, including from global leaders such as automotive company Volvo Cars; Peerless, a manufacturer of drivers and amps for audio speakers; and Western Digital, which makes flash and hard drives for data storage applications.
A magnet for Minnesota jobs
Niron recently launched a commercial pilot plant in northeast Minneapolis and will build a full-scale manufacturing plant in Sartell, Minnesota, a city located just north of St. Cloud. The company plans to break ground on the facility in October and open the plant in early 2027.
“The new plant will create about 175, high-paying jobs,” Larson says. “We will need engineers, technicians, managers, jobs like that. This should generate a lot of economic activity over in Sartell.”
Throughout the company’s journey, the University of Minnesota has remained a close partner as Niron has grown. The University’s Technology Commercialization office helped Wang apply for the original patent to his magnet and helped him make the connections to commercialize the product with the launch of Niron.
“Technology Commercialization is such a critical organization,” Wang says. “They have a really great arrangement to help two sides—the faculty and students here at the University and the external world. It’s a beautiful pipeline, and I feel very strongly that we have one of the best technology commercialization teams in the country.”
One of the biggest connections for Niron’s continued development is through a sponsored research program. In this partnership, Niron uses its funding dollars in Wang’s lab to create better-performing magnets. That partnership continues to this day.
Niron has also utilized the University’s Characterization Facility (CharFac) for specialized analytical capabilities. CharFac is a lab that provides high-tech services and instruments—such as electron microscopes and X-ray scattering machines—to engineering, earth, and biological scientists. Niron is an industry member at the lab.
“We have our engineers go over to the University and run very sophisticated equipment to help with our product development and research,” Larson says.
The University has also reinvested in Niron through seed funding, while Niron has hired several University graduates to its team.
Though Niron’s current magnets can’t yet compete with the typical high-performance rare-earth versions, Wang says the potential is enormous and the work being done is just scratching the surface of what’s possible.
“If we improve the performance to match what we already have on the market, that would be huge,” he says. “Our calculations show that, in time, we could even do better.”
A Record Year for Startups
Giving Link
Support University of Minnesota startups with a gift to the University's Discover, Advance, Impact Initiative Fund, providing early stage investment funding to support innovative research in successfully entering the market, ensuring groundbreaking ideas become impactful businesses.
