Although rare-earth magnets are vital to many modern devices, from cell phones and electric cars to hospital equipment and wind turbines, few of these essential metal alloys are produced in Europe. An EU-funded consortium is revolutionising production, enabling these super-strong permanent magnets to be fully recycled and manufactured sustainably.
The theory of electromagnetic polarisation has been under development for more than 150 years since British scientist Michael Faraday provided the first experimental evidence of the interaction between electricity, magnetism and light. An EU-funded project is now helping to fit together the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Precision mechanical sensors are a fundamental part of modern technologies and are used to stabilise aeroplanes, predict earthquakes, deploy life-saving airbags, monitor the integrity of bridges, and even time computer processes. Despite being used almost universally, their precision is generally limited by the electronic circuits used to monitor them. The EU-funded cQOM project has been working on using light instead of electronics to monitor these sensors to significantly enhance precision and reliability.
Remember when there were no satellites? Before your time, maybe, as the first was launched in 1957. Today, we would be lost without them - quite literally so, but satnavs are only one of many services these orbital outriders underpin. EU-funded research is helping to secure Europe's access to the carbon fibre materials needed to build them.
